cuts that to take effect in january and have it will affect defense contractors. then, stephen farnsworth, political science professor at the university in virginia on a campaign 2012 and virginia's role as a swing state. also, anthony sanders of george mason university on housing prices. washington journal," lived with your phone calls, every morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> see the first of the presidential debates next wednesday, live on c-span, c- span radio, c-span.org and online. . watch ending date. tonight, a debate at the texas tribune festival between mayor julian castro and ted cruz. and then political fact checkers look at it statements from the obama and ronnie campaigns. then debates for california's

seventh congressional district. >> to texas politicians, each touted as the future of their parties, debated the economy, immigration, and other issues at the "texas tribune" festival in austin. julian castro is the mayor of saying antonio and was the keynote speaker at the republican convention. tedthis is one hour. >> i think you know the drill today. i hope you will enjoy as many of those as you can. if you have phones and you're agram,ing to tweet or instr we ask you to turn off your phones.

please give our sponsors a hand. [applause] we will visit for about 40 minutes. when we get started, there are phones on either i'll. we ask that of that the microphone at the appropriate -- we ask that you line up at the microphone at the program time than july 31, 2012 began with the announcement that julian caster would be the keynote speaker at the democratic national convention. the footsteps of several. before mayor castro had uttered

the words menudo " gulf, speculation began. -- menudo cookoff, speculation began. july 31 was a port from which the future of texas and possibly the nation was visible. mayor castro and mr. crews are young and intelligent lawyers who can give a punch and take a punch and give a stunning view of the world with all of its opportunities and all of its challenges. there also is vanity and a state that is in the epicenter of the

demographic change recrimination. mayor captured just turned 38 pin he is a graduate of stanford university and harvard law school. he is a national co-chair of the obama-biden reelection campaign. mr. cruz is 41. he is a graduate of princeton university and harvard law previous work with chief justice william rehnquist, advised the bush-cheney campaign in 2000, work with the federal trade commission and the department of justice before serving as the nation's youngest solicitor general. but to have them both here

today. [applause] the gentleman, thank you so much for being here. you both had quite a summer. mayor castor, let me ask you to reflect on this summer. -- mayor castro, let me ask you to reflect on this summer. >> first, a greenwich solutions for of and for a wonderful event. -- first, congratulation for evident for a wonderful event -- for evan for a wonderful event. it was like throwing a

claustrophobic into a closet and then taking away the key. [laughter] i think what we have seen in historical cycle of some of what we saw in 2010 -- in this 2012 cycle is in some of what we saw in 2010. people are still committed to the fundamental ideals that make the nine states special, that make it a land of opportunity, that make it a believe the greatest country in the world. in the same time gun they are nervous. -- at the same time, they are nervous. it has been an exciting summer appeared i also learned that my daughter knows have to flip her hair. [laughter] >> she does. most famous child in america. the nation also learn you have a twin brother.

they said that the democrats love julien castro so much, they have an extra one. [laughter] mr. cruz, where did you learn about yourself and what did you learn about the state of politics in this country? >> at the convention, i was just glad that i did not fall off stage. when i came out, the plan had been there would be a two-minute video. as happens at these conventions, they were running a bit late. they said okay, we will cancel the video. you had right on down and instead of just a clean stage, you had a podium and the teleprompter going down and there was literally aboua 15-fot tent going down behind me.

>> were you surprised at the convention about anything you her saw? you have been pretty clear about your own views. but what did you hear? >> i thought the convention was fantastic. but the there was an energy on the ground. in terms of what i have learned and experienced in the last year-and-a-half, it truly has been -- the biggest thing in terms of our primary is that it was really a testament to the grassroots. in any other cycle, what happened in the republican primary could not have happened. in any ordinary year, the should have been a very easy lay down. we were out-spent three-one. when we started, i was a 2%. >> the primaries back in march. you may not be sitting here. >> thank god for small miracles.

>> you published an opinion piece in "the wall street *" this week where you say that america is that a crisis point. can you explain that to? >> i think we are at a fiscal and economic cliff. i think we have pursued government spending programs that have created a debt that is out of control. at the convention come after talking, i went home to my hotel at 1:30 a.m. and i was looking on my iphone at twitter. and the comedian paula pound stone had sent a tweet that evening. i don't know her, but she said " ted cruz just said that, when his daughter was born, the debt was $5 trillion and now it is $16 trillion. what the heck did she do?" [laughter] >> you think the debt is putting

the nation in crisis. >> along with government spending, is causing the dead. we have seen a growing expansion in the power of the federal government. it is crippling small businesses. >> you are the national co-chair of the obama-bided campaign. >> i would put the challenge that we have as a nation in a different context. and say that, to the extent that we are a nation in "crisis," although i would not describe it as that because i believe that we can fundamentally overcome this and that we can do it in a fairly rational and reasonable way, i think the challenges that we have now had more than a generation of folks who are not willing to ask americans to

sacrifice and to be realistic about how we take on our biggest challenges. for instance, everyone remembers the republican debate where they asked whether you would take the bargain of one dollar's worth of tax increases or $10 worth of basically tax cuts and everybody raised their hands and said they would not accept that. we have become a country where -- it is not just one side, both sides, but more one side now than ever is not willing to be realistic about how we can tackle these challenges. if there is a crisis that i see in the united states for the long term, it is not the temporal issue of how we will deal with money. because i am very confident we will be able to deal with that. it is how will we bring that --

bring back our sense of what we can accomplish together as americans when we are realistic about those challenges. that is the thing i think about the word "crisis" in this country. >> mayor castro is not the first to suggest that. for 10 years now, we heard that the government is not asking all of us to do enough. >> it is interesting. the word "sacrifice," when i hear a politician say that, it usually means grab your wallet. it usually means increasing taxes. and i will give president obama credit to in his the first presidential candidate since walter mondale to run explicitly on a platform that he will raise

taxes. >> he is saying he will raise taxes on the wealthy. >> according to the supreme court, he already has raised taxes. that was the basis on which the supreme court of held obamacare, that it was a tax increase. >> to mayor castro's point, people who have more are being asked to sacrifice. you do not agree with that. >> i do not agree with that. but me say two things. if you look historically, such spending has been 20% of gdp. federal spending has been 18% of gdp. i think the problem is we're spending too much. in the last three years, federal spending has gone from 20% of gdp to 25% of gdp. that is a fundamental structural

shift and it is produced -- it has produced record-setting deficits and putting us in a path of greece and where much of europe are. the economy is teetering on the edge of recession. the were seen can do is jacked up taxes on small businesses and entrepreneurs or job creators. that makes it all the more likely to push us into a recession. and for the 23 million people who struggling for work, the worst thing to do is hurt the small businesses that create those jobs. >> it is fair to say that the president has reduced taxes. he has reduced taxes for small businesses 18 times. he cut taxes for '95 -- for 95% of families out there. the question is do we ask everybody to sacrifice? when you look at the marginal rate in the united states, when ronald reagan took office, the marginal office with 71% to 72%. it is interesting to me that the

greatness that people speak of in terms of the united states, when we talk about the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, 1970's, the marginal rate that folks paid was much greater. nobody says we will go back to that. at the same time, during the clinton years, we had marginal rates that were a little bit higher than they are now and we had some of the best economic times that the country has ever seen. that is what i'm talking about. my concern for the country is that all of this heat has been generated around this issue instead of light and analysis and a sober look at the role that every american play, should play in strengthening our country. that is the concern i have in the long run. >> i want to pick up mr. cruz's suggestion that the economy is in trouble from -- is in

trouble. texas has endured. but san antonio has had a tough couple of years. the census bureau report brought these numbers appeared between 2009 and 2011, unemployment in san antonio went up by more than a full point. needed household income has gone down. you know how tough the economy is. you're leaving a city that has been bearing some of the brunt. can you talk about that? few dispute that the economy is in a world of hurt? whoever's responsibility that is. >> i think every american would say that the economy is not where we wanted to be. but if you look nationally, there is no question that we have had 30 months of private- sector job growth. 4.6 million new jobs that were created during that time. at the same time, if we were to go right now to the archives of

the university and pull out the front page headlines from four years ago and look at what was happening at this 0.4 years ago, where we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs. in the month when president obama took office, we lost almost 800,000 jobs that month. there was talk of another depression at that time. whether we are talking about taxes or san antonio or anyplace, are we were we want to be? no. but are we better off than where we were? when we're talking about going into another depression and the banks collapsing and so on and so on? absolutely. there is no question in my mind. >> this question has become a part of his campaign. mayor castro makes the case that there have been 30 consecutive months of job growth. and when the president came into office, things were significantly worse now.

would you like to take issue with this? >> right now, tragically, work- force participation is at the lowest rate it has been in 30 years. you mentioned john stuart been normally, you can get a barometer of where the country is by the late-night comics. >> i thought you said comics. [laughter] >> i will let even get into the midst of that. >> but letterman is getting older and we will have a vacant chair at some point. [laughter] >> so what did jay leno say. >> they went from 8.3% to 8.1% and the reason was that three and 60,000 people dropped out of the work force entirely, stop looking for work, which is the only reason the numbers went down.

nearly 400,000 people give up hope they could find work. so obama has a strategy for re- election which is encouraging even more people to stop looking for what. >> but the question is not whether the and employment rate is 8.1% or 8.3%. the question is whether it is better than when the president took office? >> absolutely not. when you have the worst employment participation in 30 years -- in the three and a half years of president obama tenure, gdp growth has been 1.5%. historically, for the last seven years, it has been 3.7%. we have had less than half the historical average pared by contrast, in 1984, gdp growth was 7.2% print what does that mean when the economy is growing, when small businesses

are prospering? they are creating new jobs and people are able to find work. it creates opportunity for everyone. what we have unfortunately is small business after small business facing crushing uncertainty. the single biggest question you hear from business leaders is they don't know between obamacare and dodd-frank and the offshore drilling moratorium in texas. but entrepreneurs expressed to me is the sense of great uncertainty. what will the federal regulators do? and the president keep promising to raise everyone's taxes, which is causing small businesses to keep capital on the sidelines and not deploy it because they have so much uncertainty. >> i am not certain that the president is going to raise their once taxes. but you know what the growth rate was -- do a deal with the

gdp growth rate was at the end of bush? >> no. [laughter] >> the 4.6 million new private- sector jobs created with this president is more than were created under george bush. you have a president who basically inherited one of the worst economies that this country has ever seen. of course, what will you do with a falling object? that object will fall and you have to pick up and the rise back up will be a little bit slower. what you have seen is that coming in the 30 months, 4.6 million new jobs, he has already created more jobs centers w. bush. this is a president who understands how to get the economy going and this election should bebethese two candidates, who actually has a plan about the future? given his record, i have more

confidence that president obama can get that done than governor romney appeared >> -- then governor romney. >> right now, you're trying to get a sales tax increase to pay for pre-k. can you defend, sitting next to someone who does not like texas famously, the decision to brought to market with a tax increase even for something you so strongly believe in? many mayors are with yo but there are a lot of elected officials and san antonio who are not with you. >> basically, i fundamentally believe that brainpower is the currency of success. in the 21st century global economy. those communities that created will be the communities that thrive in our market economy. and those communities that do

not will be the ones who fall behind. san antonio, i believe, needs to make a huge investment in education. that investment is not limited to more money. it also means getting parents involved. it also means expecting more from everybody along whole education ecosystem, from administrators to policy-makers to teachers come expecting more out of everyone. so what i have on the table in san antonio is basically a 1/8 cent sales tax that will cost the median household in the city $7.81 per year. mind you, every day in texas, it cost $359.81 to keep a juvenile incarceration. what we have on the table is the opportunity to educate more than 22,404-year-olds with --

22,400 4-year-olds with high quality pre-k. >> i don't believe that taxes are inherently evil. >> that will be tweeted, by the way. [laughter] give them a second. [laughter] >> i do believe that taxes are inherently evil. i'd like them and nobody likes the impaired but it will the voters in san antonio that there is no way to sugarcoat this. i am asking you for this tax increase. more than that, i believe in you. i believe that may put it in front of you, you can make a decision as to whether or not you want to make this investment. so are you willing to pay $7.81 if we meet you halfway by ensuring accountability, ensuring that we require parents to be involved in their child's

education because they're probably the most important shepherds of what happens in a child's life. we require performance audits and we set this with a definitive time from the eight years. in eight years, you get to vote on this again. you can either keep it or leave it based on how it has performed. and we set actual schools that make it transparent. what we will have to decide in texas, especially on the issue of education, because brainpower is so important to economic success in the future, is are we willing to make the investment? and if we do, i also believe that we have the right to expect more from everybody in the education ecosystem, from parents to policy makers to a administrators, everybody down . >> mr. cruz, sounds like he is telling the community, you can control it. if you want money for pre-k, you

can vote to support or reject. do you have an issue with that? >> i agree with you. i commend mayor caster for taking leadership on an issue that he is passionate about pair and for taking it to the voters of san antonio. i think that is where the important issues of education should be decided come at the state level and the local level. >> you would vote no, however. >> if i were a citizen of san antonio, i would look at the merits of the argument there is a world for taxes and things that government can provide. that is a choice for the citizens of san antonio to make. on the merits, is it the thing that makes sense for them to make. if it works, you can look at the results and other communities can make the decisions. one of the reasons i do like federal decisions that are forced from washington all across the country is that different communities have

different needs. and what might be a good policy in san antonio may be a terrible policy in laredo or new york city. >> the mayor says that he does not believe taxes are inherently evil but with qualifications. you? word.il is a strong roa >> it is. and that is what i am asking you. do you think taxes are inherently evil or do you? >> i think taxes are morally neutral. what is done with it can be good or bad. >> let me move on to health care. [laughter] i tried. this week, the census bureau that i alluded to earlier, they also talked about the state of health care in this country can it said that texas now has 5.8 million uninsured citizens, down as a percentage of our overall population. now 23% of our overall population is uninsured.

we have the most in the country. along with that, i report by stephen murdoch can michael klein said that, if only we would embrace the federal health care reform, we could insure 3 million texans by 2014. in a state with the most citizens uninsured in the country, why would we not try something that at least some people believe would ensure more than 3 million of our fellow citizens? >> right now, the nation is struggling with obamacare and what will happen if it is fully implemented. i think that is one of the central issues at stake in november. it is one of the central issues at stake in the presidential race and in the congressional and senate race progressed the fact is that you would vote to repeal. >> i am an answer to the -- i am an enthusiastic vote to repeal. if you look at what is happening with obamacare already, you see small businesses, employers drop

health insurance -- talking about dropping health insurance if obama's is care is implemented. if it is fully implemented, i believe, it will lead toward shifting more and more the citizenry to government-provided insurance, to providing -- to moving us toward a single-payer system. manyhe did not go all the way to a single-payer system immediately. i think that is zero -- i think that is what obamacare is headed toward defeat is fully implemented. every nation on earth that has implemented social health care, government-run health care, you have seen poor quality. you have seen rationing. you have seen waiting lines provide don't think that is what americans want. and i also think that obamacare was implemented with a government arrogance that was extraordinary.

there has been no major social legislation passed in modern times, other than obamacare, that was on a pure party-line vote ran down the throat both of the opposition and of the american people. >> you will double down on the idea that the affordable care act, which has been found constitutional, is socialized medicine. >> i think it is designed to lead as inexorably toward socialized medicine. >> i guess that you have a different point of view. >> i do. let's take a look at what the facts are. it has been fascinating to hear the discussion about obamacare over the last couple of years. every time you hear it, it is anecdote after anecdote, year after fear about what will happen, but what people are talking, snippets of conversation here and there. you started with a very good fact, which is that the percentage of folks who actually have health care, not just in

texas, but in the united states of the last year has gone up for the first time in a very long time. the reason it has gone up is because now folks who are up to 26 years old can stay on their parents' plan. pre-existing conditions are not some paperwork excuse for an insurance company to deny you benefits that you have earned and paid for. and so the only thing that we have out of obamacare are a positive so far been everything else, well, small-business owners, they are worried about it or is there a chilling effect that is happening because of it? there's no empirical evidence for that. it is all about some future that is out there that is painted very darkly. although, i will say that we do have a model to look at and it is massachusetts. it is romneycare.

>> i wouldn't vote for that either. but but what we saw in massachusetts was that folks like it and it has worked well and it would be a great thing if the governor would embrace what he accomplished. i would agree with him that it was a good way for massachusetts to go. and in 2015, 2016, 2017, if mr. cruz is elected this year, if he is up for reelection in 2018, i bet that folks will be singing a different tune about obamacare. >> to the specific point that the mayor made about pre- existing conditions and allowing young people to remain for a certain time on their parents' health insurance and even governor romney, whom you support for president has said that he would keep some of those things in any health care plan that he would put forward if he were elected president. are you ok with preexisting conditions? are you ok with keeping people on their parents' health care

insurance to 26? are there things that you would permit or would repeal the whole thing? >> no. >> so you are against people being able to get insurance despite pre-existing conditions? >> let me be clear. candidates and politicians like to come with goodies print they say we will give you something and it will be great. but they never focused on the cost. my view of how to approach health care reform -- this is a complicated issue that does not admit to a simple band a solution. it is fundamentally different from the approach of president obama. i think health care reform should expand markets, expand competition and empower consumers and patients and disempower government bureaucrats from second- guessing the decisions that are made between a patient and a doctor. what does that mean specifically? the three reforms a think would be most important would be, number one, allowing people to purchase health insurance across

state lines. why is that? because that would create a true 50-state national market for low-cost catastrophic health care. part of the problem, every time politicians say that every health plan must include the following bills and whistles and they give away all the stuff, it has the inevitable effect of driving the cost of health insurance for everybody. and one of the biggest reasons so many people in texas and nationally don't have health insurance is because it is so expensive. if we had a 250-state national market with low-cost catastrophic care, that would expand access. chris so buying across state lines would be number one. what are two and three? >> #2 is sitting in a tax- deferred way to take care of their health needs. i think that has significant impact, both in terms of manpower and consumers and in terms of constraining costs. >> so that is no. 2.

>> #3, working to delink health insurance from employment p.m. it is a historical accident that most of us to get -- from employment. it is a historical accident that most of us get our health insurance from our employment. we don't live in the 1940's and 1950's were people go to work for one company for 50 years. if you or i lose our jobs, we don't lose our life insurance, home insurance, car insurance. >> so portability is a concern. >> and insurance is personal and you own it and it travels with you regardless of your job. that goes a long way to solving the problem of pre-existing conditions. you're not losing your health care. >> i want the mayor to respond but i ask you two specific questions and i want you to answer them pierre do you support allowing people to buy insurance despite preexisting conditions? do you support the principle of allowing young people to stay on

their parents' health insurance until age 26? >> the center those one at a time. let's start with age -- let's answer those one at a time. let's start with age 26. that will increase the cost of insurance coverage for everyone. >> which you do not want to see happen been so i take that as a no. >> it is a no as a government mandate. but if you allow people to buy insurance across state lines, some policies will be available that to come if you want to buy this policy and cover your kids up to age 26, you can do so in pay higher premiums. i don't to jack up everyone's premiums because these things are not free. >> men they know or the possibility of that happening are definitely -- happening organically, definitely. >> yes. >> what about preexisting conditions? >> insurance companies should not dump you when you get sick. but if you have demanded that

you must be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions, that is not insurance. >> if i go to get insurance and the company wants to deny me, your point of view is they should be able to peer >> yes. and ed will give you a reason why. let's imagine -- yes. and let me give you a reason why appeared let's imagine you have home insurance. wait until you're home burns down and then go by fire insurance. you cannot have a requirement that everyone must be covered regardless of preexisting conditions unless you have an individual mandate that forces everyone against their will to purchase insurance. i disagree with the individual mandate and most texans disagree with a individual mandate and those are intertwined. you cannot have the goodies without the cost. >> i have a different view of it. i have a different perspective on it. in fact, the underlying

perspective seems to be that everybody will go their own way. when everybody goes their own way, things will work out. especially with something like health care, we need to be more intentional than that. but just to take an example, one of the things that you mentioned is this idea of folks getting low-cost catastrophic insurance, right? so that everybody gets that, a catastrophic coverage -- you have a huge help the event in your life that will be very expensive and you are able to get interest so it will be quite as and -- quite as expensive. but if you look at the reality, for instance, in the hispanic community, in our community, how folks have diabetes or hypertension, every year it is getting worse. we have so many folks who live truly are using the emergency room as their primary care physician.

they have the catastrophe. they end up in the emergency room because they go into diabetic shock or they have to get an amputation. my grandmother eventually did. i don't want forced to wait as a state or nation to work with lks until they have that catastrophe. health-wise. when an insurance company says they have a pre-existing condition, i want them to be able to get health care. more than that, we can make it economically workable, as the president has, so they can get that health care. just on that point, we don't want to wait until someone has a health catastrophe to say, now, instead of $25,000, it will be $5,000. no. we want to help ensure so folks can get good health care coverage throughout their lives so they don't end up in the emergency room and that health

catastrophe, so they can actually be preventative, not just experienced the catastrophe. that is what we ought to aim for is a nation, not the other. >> i have five minutes before i open it up to the audience for questions. you said you don't question whether that is legitimate. but we have two gentlemen up here who are both hispanics. i want to ask you both as individuals and members of the hispanic iscommunity in texas. what do you think about immigration that has been kicked down the road. we are finally beginning to talk about it in earnest. can you talk about where you think this country ought to go on this subject? >> immigration is an issue that i think, sadly, neither party is serious about. uc both political parties

demagogue the issue of immigration, using it to scare people. i think the underlying policy is quite simple. most texans, most americans agree that, number one, we need to get serious about securing our borders. we need to stop talking about it and actually solve the national security and law enforcement challenge of a border that is not secure. and number two, we need to remain in nation that not just welcomes, but celebrates legal immigrants. americans by choice is what ronald reagan described. our great strength as a nation is that all of us, our ancestors, came from all of real-world seeking freedom and opportunity and we need to remain a nation that celebrates immigrants and secure our border and gets serious about stopping the problem. >> yet that same president coming in 1986 and instituted a program that was effectively, if not literally, amnesty, which

has been criticized by members of your party for opening the floodgates. >> i don't think amnesty is the right approach could i don't think that most texans or most americans support it. i think amnesty is unfair to the millions of legal immigrants to wait years and sometimes the kids in line to come here legally. to reward those who broke the law is fundamentally wrong. >> we know the president put into effect prosecutorial discretion, and wait to address the question of children who are undocumented persons in this country. we do not have comprehensive immigration reform in this country. where should we go? >> my hope is that, after this election, the environment in d.c. will be more supportive of

a comprehensive immigration reform. of course, we have different views on the subject. i agree with the president's decision to exercise prosecutorial discretion. i also agree what he did for the dreamers. i hope we are able to pass the dream at. >> you are opposed? >> yes. >> but when you look at what is going on out there, the president is getting knocked on both sides. some are knocking him because they say that he deported more folks -- this administration, they say, has deported more focused than any other. >> well, the bush administration. >> we know that, since 2004, the number of border patrol agents have doubled in this country and that, president obama, he called for an increase to avert 21,000

border patrol agents. since 2007, revenue going toward border security has increased 55%. and we also see, for instance, in terms of mexicans coming to the united states, that is at net zero right now. to suggest that somehow our borders are not secure, if what that means is are they as secure as we would want them to be? we could always make them more secure, right? we could theoretically have zero people ever coming across the border. but the borders are more secure than they ever have been before. >> i guess we could ask if the borders are more secure than they were four years ago. [laughter] issue then there's this of the tone of the debate.

i think the fear mongering in the debate. for instance, this issue of folks who are otm, other than mexicans, and know that you and lieutenant governor dewhurst talked about this in the debate. it was mentioned that there were many folks from middle eastern countries who are among the otm's who come to the united states. do you know how many middle eastern country otm's there were? >> i don't know. >> it is less than 0.002% of the boats that came across. it is so low that they could probably fit in this room. now, surely be -- we might suggest that one person is one too many, right? which i agree with. at the same time, this is why i said at the beginning of our conversation that there's a larger point here.

if we are in some sort of crisis as a nation, the crisis is not any temporal or fiscal issue that we're facing or one policy issue. it is how we address these issues in a reasonable way on both sides. i do agree with you that, on both sides, people have used this issue and others like a pinata politics. they beat it around, turn these issues into cartoons. but on this issue of what it means for our country to have immigrants coming to get immigrants who have been the building blocks of our nation, i really believe we need to take a sober look at it could hope we can get comprehensive immigration reform passed. i believe that the dreamers were morally blameless and ought to be allowed to stay here and pursue their dreams of going to college or serving the military

were working or whatever. i don't think that coming in the long run, the united states will be well served by being a nation that sends the signal to the world that come even though we are saying we like legal immigrants, we are comfortable with where we are at. the needs of our workforce don't support that. i think the future of our country is stronger if we go in another direction. so my hope is that we can get comprehensive immigration reform passed. >> is there a question? we will have you lining up. do that now while mr. cruz speaks. >> let me make a point on what the president did in terms of acting unilaterally. i think it should troublemaker castro and it should trouble democrats. a year ago, president obama said he had no constitutional

authority to effectively grant amnesty to 800,000 people who are here illegally. and then, as we got closer to an election year, as we get closer to november, magically, he asserted that constitutional authority. >> shocked to discover the politics show up in an election- year. >> indeed, shocked. i am concerned by unchecked power in the hands of the executive, with that executive is a democrat or republican. -- whether that executive is a democrat or republican. if president obama is right that he has the power to say, it does not matter what our federal immigration laws are, i will ignore those laws. and it is not simply prosecutorial discretion. when you register, you are effectively here illegally. do that, i president can

would be curious what mayor castro would think of a republican president who would begin erasing losses from the books. >> i thought we went through that a couple of years back. [laughter] [applause] >> let's actually talk about that. let's talk about a very specific instance. >> the biggest case in a year as solicitor general is a tragic crime in houston. two teenage girls were horribly murdered. the judicial arm of united nations issued an order to reopen the conviction of 51 murders. and the president, george w. bush, signed an order that attempted to order the state courts to obey the world courts. as solicitor general working for greg debora, on behalf of the state of texas, went before the supreme court and said that the

president does not have the authority to unilaterally ignore the law. in fact, i use this exact same example. george w. bush is a republican, texas, i work for him and i admire him in many respects, but i fear unchecked executive authority. >> regardless of party. >> the supreme court struck it down. i have not heard a single voice in the democratic party of raising the question of why is it the president has the authority to ignore the law. that is a dangerous precedent. if president obama supports the dream that or anything else, he can push legislation through and have it considered. in san antonio, with the tax increase for increasing pre- school, you said to put it to the democratic process. i think that is the weight change should be done, not through executive assertions of

a 40. >> through prosecutorial discretion, he said we will prioritize certain cases. he did not say we are writing off the books all of these other immigration cases, right? again, what you're doing is projecting into the future a result, just like with health care that has not happened yet. that is not what he said. process curatorial discretion exist -- prosecutorial discretion, as you know and you are a better attorney dan, exists in every single county courthouse all the way of to the upper levels of our government. is not breaking new ground pin he is not writing off these emigration cases. he is saying that we will prioritize those who have committed felonies, who are real criminals because that is how we believe that, with the resources that we have to spend, that we will keep our states safest. we want communities to be saved so we will start with the folks were criminals. >> he did a little more than that. he said we will not prosecute

these people. it was not just that we will focus a lot of attention on others. the category people who violated a federal law -- >> and again, he did not write off those cases. he said the map for these two years, while congress has the opportunity, we hope to do something about this and change the landscape of the law. we will have this two-year pause. this is a temporary status. >> i want to apologize in advance. i don't know that i will get to everybody, but we will try. these guys can debate all day long, but we will go on. please make them quick questions. >> my question is for both and

gentlemen, but more for mr. cruz. as he advocates for spending cuts, there is a country in the world right now that instituted immediate, consistent austerity and that is great britain. in the coalition government, they cut spending dramatically. thus far, they have failed to produce the economic recovery that it was promised to produce. in fact, i think recently, britain has dipped back into recession. so what makes him think that it will work here. >> austerity has not worked well in a lot of places. >> your solving the problems they're paired i don't disagree that government spending cuts on their own don't necessarily produce growth. the reason you see spending cuts is because our national debt now

exceeds the gross domestic product and you're trying to pull it back from the brink, in terms of growth, my priorities in the usa would be to lead the effort to dramatically shrink the size of our and the standing of the federal government. to get growth going, the most effective levers are regulatory reform and tax reform, both of which are removing impediments from the private sector, from small businesses to create jobs. if we can ease the regulatory burden, if we can use the tax burden, that is how you get gdp growth up. cutting spending is not primarily directed at growth. it is primarily directed at pulling in nation back from the brink. >> my name is danny. i want to ask both of you a question about young people in general. the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in the past two decades, as much as 440%

occurred but student loan debt has skyrocketed as the well -- as well. last year's college graduates, just half of them were either unemployed or underemployed. what is your message for young people like myself looking into the future in terms of my job prospects and how i will fare in this economy. >> mayor, give this young man hope. [laughter] >> i would say, first, stick with what will be the pay dirt in the 21st century global economy, which is getting an education, getting the knowledge and the technical skills that it takes to succeed. my fear is that, in the coming years, folks who have the ability to go to college or technical training or university may choose not to thinking i don't want to incur student debt.

first of all, reforms made in the last couple of years have made better for students. secondly, you will never hurt yourself by educating yourself. you will always benefit yourself. so those would generally be my to pieces of advice. >> but, if i can interject, if there's no way i can get a job out there, there is a half-and- half a chance, do i want to put myself through $40,000 in debt doing that? >> there is no question that the job market today is not the job market of america when it was full throttle. but remember that things are getting better. you want to have those skills so you can be competitive in the economic marketplace as this recovery continues. >> christopher from dallas. you mentioned immigration waiting list for legal immigration, but these are based

on family preferences or highly skilled workers. most undocumented workers to not have these abilities. would you change the system and eliminate the cuban assistance act that allow you to come here with an unfair advantage that others don't have. >> i did not immigrant from cuba. that is not where i came from. >> is it how your father came? >> that is how my father came. there is a rule through this country where we recognize the principle of asylum. we recognize the principle of political oppression. my father was imprisoned and tortured and beaten almost to death. my aunt nearly lost her life in jail. for decades if not centuries, we have recognized the political oppression is qualitatively

different when you have a dictator and a murderer in power who is torturing and oppressing its people. that is different from people who are coming from economic challenges. we have long recognized that there is a qualitative difference between the two. i would be thrilled to repeal the cuban adjustment act as soon as we don't have an oppressive dictator in cuba who is a pressing and torturing his people. >> my name is judy and i'm from boston. governing involves compromise pin can you share with us what your attitude towards compromise with democratic legislators would be if elected? also, if you have or you will be selling the grover norquist pledged which will limit your ability? >> this came up in the indiana senate race where mr. murdoch said explicitly that my version

of.com -- my version of compromises when the democrats come over to my side. so where do you fall on this? >> is a very important question. my idea of compromise is the same exact as ronald reagan. president reagan said, what do you to if they ask you half a loaf. you take it. and then you come back for more. i am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody, republicans, democrats, independents, libertarians. i have joop before that i will work with marcion's -- if they are willing to shrink the size and power of the federal government. i think we're facing a fiscal and economic cliff and we need to solve that problem. i have no interest in going to washington and giving a bunch of cathartic speeches. we're there to fix the problem. that is what texans are looking for, cereus leaders to ensure

the opportunity and prosperity that everyone of us has been blessed to enjoy. but that it is therefore our kids and grandkids. on compromise, i am happy to work on an agreement. us say tax reform, i fully support simplifying the tax code, moving to a low uniform but that is paid by everyone can i mean i did everything that i want. if we are moving in a positive direction and events in so many compromises going backwards. they have compromised in a way that makes the problem worse, that grows government, that increases the debt. i do not support compromise just for the sake of cutting the deal. >> the norquist pledge? yes or no? >> yes. >> 30 seconds? >> you campaign in poetry and

governing process. the problem is -- govern in prose. it does not sound much like poetry in government these days. it sounds worse. people do not want to compromise. in san antonio, we have shrunk the federal government. the number of employees on our city payroll has shrunk by 4% to 5%. we eliminated positions. everybody talks about ronald reagan -- ronald reagan did not shrink the size of government. government was much bigger when reagan left office than when he started. there is this idea that is created out there that does not match the reality. when you get down to local communities where we do compromise, where we make the tough policy decisions, then yes, sometimes you can not do it. >> we are out of time. we're committed to sticking to its schedule. [applause]

thank you all for coming. we will see you elsewhere during the day. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> see the first of the presidential debates, next wednesday, live on c-span, c- span radio, an online at c- span.org. watch and engage. next, political fact checkers look at statements coming from the obama and running campaigns. then, a debate between the u.s. house candidates in california's 7 -- seventh congressional district. later, from the "texas tribune" festival, a debate between san antonio mayor julian castro and senate candidate ted cruz. >> c-span's live coverage of political debate continues with the candidates for senate in nevada. the incumbent republican faces a democratic -- rep. senator keller was appointed by

the governor after the resignation of senator john hansen. the rate this race a tossup. in other tossup, the wisconsin senate race. candidates are tommy thompson and madison congresswomen tammy baldwin, a democrat. they're competing for the seat of a retiring senator. their debate will be live on c- span, friday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. >> i want c-span 2 -- watch c- span every time, especially when there is a event going on. any time something is going on, i want to watch c-span because they typically have the most unbiased view of whatever is happening. if i want to get spun in a circle, i will watch the other news organizations. i love c-span. i watch the tv -- on tv, on line, if something is going on and i want to know what is happening, i always turn to c- span. anytime i need to know what is

going on, i know c-span will have the real story of what is really happening. >> josh truitt watches c-span on direct tv. c-span, created by american cable companies in 1979. brought to you as a public service by your local television provider. >> today, a group of political fact checkers assess the claims made by the obama and romney campaigns in their advertising. the panelists worked for politifact, the washington post, and the associated press. this is an hour-and-a-half. >> good morning. my name is katheleen hall jamieson. i direct the annenberg public policy center at university of pennsylvania. welcome to our session -- this includes sessions trying to address the question, what is the role of journalism in a debunking deceptions and holding tenpins accountable? to set the fringe for our

discussion, we are releasing the results of a survey of adults, with a margin of error of 3.2%. we will offer as it concludess and that the public has a lot to learn about the 2012 presidential race. also, we will say that those -- those who seek out fact checking on the internet, do no more. here are specifics. a sizable proportion of the public fails to understand the plan and records of major presidential candidates. when people watch debates, the level of knowledge improves. we expect in the second, third, and third wave of the study, to find that in these areas we have seen an increase of accurate reporting of candidates' stances on issues. we also see suggested evidence in the data to say that when journalism concentrates on an issue, we increase knowledge.

we see evidence that there is an association between checking online with fact checkers and news sites -- it correlates with an increase in knowledge. let me turn to the findings. central elements of candidates' plans -- 65% know that barack obama proposes raising federal income taxes on households earning $250,000 or more a year. he promised that in 2008 as well, so the promise has been around for a while. less than -- barely half know that the current romney-run plan would preserve traditional medicare for the 65 or older and retain traditional medicare for those younger than that. 51% know that mitt romney would keep the bush tax cut in place permanently. some knowledge -- a long way to go.

next slide, please. 40%andidates'records -- know that carol taxes increased during barack obama's time in office -- decrease during barack obama's time in office. 25.4% no more jobs were created in the first term of barack obama then the last term of george bush. that is a claim you see back- and-forth in advertising about who lost jobs and gained jobs. public confusion is to be expected. 31% knew that when mitt romney was jet -- governor of massachusetts, job growth in massachusetts improved. a claim in which democrats are trying to muddy the waters. in a long way to go in terms of improving public knowledge. we see deceptions that have been reinforced a lot in advertisements. 53.8% know that the statements are not accurate. barack obama has dropped all

work requirements for individuals receiving welfare. 53.8% now that is not accurate. the rest either have the answer ron or say they do not know. 41.6% know that this statement is not accurate -- mitt romney says that as president he will work to make abortion illegal in all circumstances. deceptions in ads being believed need more public knowledge. next slide. on matters of background knowledge, in which the item was in the news for an extended period, they have higher levels of background base knowledge. these are not contested claims, so we would expect the knowledge level to be higher, but we are right around 70% who know the supreme court held that a fine in the affordable care act was constitutional since it was a tax. roughly the same%, -- this in% new that the decision to downgrade the american economy

from the highest credit rating, standard and poor blamed both democrats and republicans for the downgrade. when news media concentrates over extended periods of time over a matter of importance to the public, public knowledge rises. we have a public capable of learning. we do see increases in learning as news attention increases at debates focus more intensely on contrasting positions. next slide, please. we see that seeking at fact checking, a fact checking or news site, in order to find out whether a statement by one of the presidential candidates was correct or not is associated with higher levels of knowledge. the controversy this year about whether fact checking matters -- this association would suggest it does. there's the question, did more knowledgeable people simply come to the site? we have the causal inference wrong. in order to tighten down that

inference, we control for those factors that might increase knowledge, such as closely following the campaign, education, ideology, gender, and the like. it does not establish a causal inference, but increases the likelihood we have the direction of causality correct. we do need to go into a controlled experiment. we will report one of those in the second panel. its conclusion will be the same. fact checking by intact fact checking is -- sites, and the falck check mop -- flack check model, visual debunking of visual claims, produced the same findings. as a result, we do think that the additional, argument for causal direction is that fact checking sites and the news area on the web, as long as this -- as well as stand-alone websites, can increase public knowledge. with that as a background, it

is my pleasure to introduce brooks jackson. the first panel will discuss what it sees a possible and we hope not actual deception -- possible and we hope not actual deceptions of the presidential debate. >> thank you. i know the assignment we were given is the title -- fact checkers forecast deceptions. it was not forecast whether or not there will be deceptions. when we put this up to our colleagues and kick it around formally, nobody pushed against the premise. if any of you think there will be no deceptions during the debate, please feel free to say so. i will introduce my colleagues and analysts here. each of them is going to give their prediction about next week costa made. we will start off with bill adair, director and founder of the pulitzer-prizewinning zeit politifact.org.

a journalist of many years' experience here in washington. bill, what are we going to see? >> we had a discussion last week about what we expected. i offered to be a little contrarian. glenn made the point he did not think mitt romney would use the line is that we have all been discussing so much -- that kathleen mentioned in the survey -- the claim that obama has been gutted welfare -- welfare reform. i am sure you have seen that if ad that all three of us have debunked. i want to play a short video and -- as an example of this, and talk about why -- thes is a video from republican convention. >> i will be the first to publicly say i was wrong.

my objective is for people to know the facts and the truth of all of this stuff. >> you know what you should do? you should go on some kind of truth to work. >> as a matter of fact, i already have. >> or what? that sounds crazy. what is it called? >> it is called the truce to work. -- truth tour./ >> where is it going to go? >> 30 states, 30 cities. >> this is from politifact. [applause] they checked a romney campaign at's claim that obama and welfare work requirements, rating it "pants on fire."

that, i believe -- i do not know what that means, but clearly that would be uncomfortable. in reality, the obama administration has said it will consider proposals from states aimed at finding better ways of getting welfare recipients into jobs. factcheck.org and the washington post fact checker have said the same, that the claim is false. [applause] what do you say? >> allow me to respond. >> the truth tour begins tonight. [laughter] >> i should have set that up to point out that the beginning of that was hermann cain maintain the same point the romney campaign had, that the obama administration is getting rid of the work requirement. what i thought that showed was the importance of fact checkers

in this campaign. i really think, and brandon and glenn and i were talking about how things are different this time compared to 2008. there is more fact checking than ever, and the fact checking has a much greater prominence this time. candidates are being asked about it. i got a call from cnn last night -- they had asked mitt romney in a interview about how the fact checkers had looked at that and other ads. this year, more than ever, there is fact checking. this year, more than ever, fact checking is playing a role in the campaign. i think the survey indicates that people are better educated when they come to our site. in addition, the rest of the media is talking about our work in great ways. i think that when you look back on this election, we will say, this was the year of the fact

checker. this was the year that fact checking really hit critical mass. let me get to predictions -- i think this will come up in the debate. not because mitt romney will bring it up, but because he will be asked about it by one of the moderators. but the romney campaign has shown no signs of pulling back on this. i got a mail -- i live in virginia -- i got a mail at my house for my daughter, who registered to vote a week ago. it repeated all the lines in the welfare at. i think the romney campaign has found a message that it once to -- wants to keep hitting. i think that will come up in the debate. we will hear from obama. initially, we saw this in the polls, this has resonated, their traditional scare seniors about medicare tactics. that has been working really well. so i think obama will bring that

up. one thing we will hear is the phrase that romney would end medicare's guarantee, which is a phrase the democrats have liked to use recently. we have raided that half-true for two reasons. one, it is not like it really has a guarantee now. congress can change the medicare benefits any time it wants to. it frequently has. now, romney would change the structure in which people would pay for medicare. it would go from being -- it would turn into the essentially a voucher plan. in that sense, we found some truth and rape -- rated as half- truth. >> thank you, bill. our next prediction from glenn kessler, checker of facts, a worker of pinocchios -- awarder

of pinocchios. what will we see? >> i have two. they both deal with medicare. one thing i always say, the more complicated a subject is, the more susceptible it is stretching the truth. when it is complicated, you can make assertions that a lot of times journalists do not have the time or inclination to check. i do want to say one thing about welfare -- the reason i said i did not think romney would bring it up is because he did not mention it in his campaign speech. the issue is a very complex one with many sides to the story. though i did write the run the ad with four pinocchios. it really went over the top with the extreme interpretation. the obama administration's counter-spin leaves a lot to be desired.

there is something very fishy going on with the issuance of the memo over the summer -- the people behind that now in the administration are skeptics of the welfare law. i have not gotten to the bottom of it, but i have given the obama campaign through -- three connectors for their counter- spin, particularly the way president clinton spoke about it. i did not think romney would necessarily bring it up himself in the debates because it would allow for a very muddy back and forth between the two men. in debates your most effective when you can make a clean shot. and resonate with voters. my predictions -- romney will repeat his claim that obama cut $700 billion from medicare. during the primaries, the republicans used to claim that obama funded his health-care plan with $500 billion in cuts.

how did it balloon to $700 billion? a simple explanation. the congressional budget office is in a new estimate based on a different and later 10-year time line. republicans decided to pick the biggest number possible. medicare -- spending is not being reduced. $700 billion -- that comes from the difference over 10 years between anticipated medicare spending, what is known as the baseline, and changes the law makes to reduce spending. the statement -- that is mostly come out of health care providers, not medicare beneficiaries. the medicare actuary has raised significant doubts as to whether any cuts would take place. they are actually a bit onerous. according to the medicare trustees' report, propose reductions in spending actual strength in the long-term health of the medicare program. in fact, house republicans adopted many of the same cuts in

their own budget. a point that bill clinton made rather effectively in his speech to the democratic convention. they argue that they devote savings to reforming medicare, not funding new entitlements. that is an important difference. both parties agree that controls are needed on medicare spending. but they disagree about the best path for. this claim by the republicans, i give it to pinocchios. obama will claim that are ryan's plan for medicare will for seniors to pay $6,400 more a year to make up for cuts in the program. this is an old democratic attack that has been around for a while. the problem is it is based on an earlier version of ryan's plan. that is another thing i have given two pinocchios. people should always be aware of dire predictions far off in the future. the $6,400 figure refers to an analysis of cbo estimates of a different, less generous ryan plan that goes to the year 2022.

they make no estimates of the new version, except to say that beneficiaries might face higher costs. the plan was changed in other ways too. it changed the option of traditional medicare. it also decided to set the feature growth rate for medicare to the same matter accused by obama in his budget so there would not be a difference there. a study published recently by the journal of american -- a journal of the american medical association suggests the average cost to additional medicare would be on the $800 more a year in the rhine plan if it had been in place in 2009. that is obviously significantly lower than $6,400. strangely, president obama was at the aarp last week, and he used the $6,400 figure, which appears in many of his ads. then he added something, that was in his original plan, i want to be fair, he modified it, because obviously there was a lot of push back from seniors on that idea. will have traditional medicare

stand side-by-side with the voucher program, no current beneficiaries will be affected. it was so striking that he would undercut the message of his own ad. the headline on his remarks, " obama plays fact cheer in chief." it was an interesting moment when the president, in effect, indicated his advertisements for using simplistic and out of date figures. i wonder if ron will call and out on it in the debate. -- romney will call him out on it in the debate. >> my third colleague, james drinkard, is at the associated press, where i started many years ago. jim, i am looking at the combined experience appear of covering washington, all the baloney that its issue here. we have among us more than a century of dealing with these kinds of issues. jim, your prediction. what are we going to hear in the

debate? >> there is a pattern here. you can see that it follows the social science dictum that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. as a wire service guy, i am not in the prognostication business, but i feel fairly safe going out on the lam -- on a limb in a couple of things today. eight months ago, in the state of the union speech, obama issued an appeal to congress to spend more federal money on construction projects that would generate jobs. what he said was, take the money we are no longer spending at war. use half of the to pay down our debt. use the rest to do some nation building right here at home. we pointed out in a fact check that night the fallacy of that idea. the idea that some kind of budget surplus is going to be created when you stop the wars

is fiscal fiction. those wars have been primarily financed by borrowing. if you stop the wars, you do not have new money, you just have less debt being added. it does not treat a pool of ready cash. on top of that, the supposed savings of this supposed peace dividend is inflated because it is based on spending numbers that are extrapolated into the future that would come from the height of the intensity of the war and not -- they do not follow the downward trend that it has been in reality. we pointed all that out in a fact check on a state of the union night. how does the administration react? three weeks later, the president issued a budget that claimed $850 billion in savings from the wind down of the war's and

steered $230 billion of that highway construction. the president of the committee for responsible for budgets said the administration's logic was like a kid graduating from college who had financed most of his tuition with student loans and saying, wow, all that money, now i can spend it on something else. the reality is that there is no money. you are stuck with a bunch of debt. we fact check the budget as well. fast forward to the acceptance speech in sharp three weeks ago -- charlotte three weeks ago. obama barely changed the word. he said, i will use the money we are no longer spending on war to pay back the debt and put more people back to work. after two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over $1 trillion, it is time to do nation-building right here at home. since obama used pretty much the same words, so did we in aflac

check that night. we recycle vote we had -- our fact checker at night. we recycle what we had used. when we were asked to predict mistakes candidates would make again in the debate, this one seemed like pretty much in natural. even before today, actually, last friday, in woodbridge, virginia, obama said again that he wants to use or savings to pay down the debt and put people to work. i think that is fair game for the debates if they go there. for romney, i have a prediction that i think is solid. it goes back to the title of his campaign book two years ago -- "no apology." ever since, romney has made a point to criticize obama every time he thinks there is any whiff of apology in something the president has said. i first heard it myself last april here in town, when romney was making a group to -- speech

to a group of newspaper executives. he blamed obama for the anemic recovery and said, "obama's attention has been elsewhere. he was not focused enough on the economy. his attention had been on things like a government takeover of health care and apologizing for america abroad." in our fact check that day, we quoted what obama had said in overseas trips, including an assertion that at times the u.s. had acted contrary to its own ideals or had been selective in where it sought to promote democracy. it had sometimes shown an arrogance toward allies. we pointed out that when he made those kinds of statements that suggested the u.s. is not completely above reproach, he usually balance it with praise for things the country had done right. all that -- that is in a long

tradition of presidents and gotten past imperfections. these cannot by any normal dictionaries amount to apologies. either formal or informal. again, last month, when romney accepted his party's nomination, he repeated the assertion that obama had begun his presidency with an apology to work -- to work, and obama had confessed the u.s. had "dictated to other nations." that fact check story went into greater detail, pointing out that obama's trips to europe, latin america, to the muslim world during his first months in office, no indications were he had said the nation had made mistakes. in most of those cases, the context was a call for better relations with other countries after which he described as

damage done by misguided moves by his predecessor, bush. so we fact check that. again, it did not seem to make a difference to the campaign. earlier this month, when that violence broke out at u.s. diplomatic outposts in libya and egypt. romney jones to accuse obama of disgraceful -- jumped to accuse obama of disgraceful handling of the situation, including sympathizing with those who waged the attacks instead of condemning them and making a "apology for american principles." we fact checked that, and we pointed out that neither an unofficial statement from the cairo embassy nor statements from secretary of state hillary clinton nor obama's own statement contained any sympathy for the attackers if you read the plain language of them.

the administration's condemnation of religious incitement on the anti-muslim from did not come anywhere close to being an apology by any definition. i have a feeling that romney stands ready to apply this overly broad definition of apology at any opportunity in the debates or during the endgame of the campaign. >> thank you, jim. before i make my own prediction, i want to know something kind of remarkable happening in the last couple of days. both candidates have been asked and referred to fact checking, their reaction to it. we have a clip of what president obama said in a "60 minutes," interview. it was put up on the website of cbs. it was kind of interesting. >> the fact checkers have had problems with the ads on both sides, and city have been misleading and in some cases just not true. does that disturb you?

some of them are your ads. >> do you see sometimes us going overboard in our campaign, mistakes that are made? areas where there is no doubt somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? that happens in politics. >> aren't the american people entitled to the truth? >> the truth of the matter is that most of the time we're having a vigorous debate about our visions for the country. there is a lot at stake in this election, so is it going to be sharp sometimes? absolutely. people have a good sense of where i want to take the country, where governor romney -- >> so there you have the president saying, well, do we go overboard and make mistakes, that happens. yesterday, cnn was pressing mitt romney on the welfare matter.

he made the statement that, well, whenever we have made mistakes or false claims, we have corrected them. are any of you aware of any corrective ads the romney campaign -- the romney campaign was not even when cnn pressed them for examples. they have not corrected anything -- romney seems to have stated that they have made some incorrect claims. i think that the likelihood is that we will hear some twisted or false claims coming out because this is not unique to this particular campaign. this has been going on for a long time. we have pretty strong evidence that the greeks holding forth in the agora in athens, 2500 years ago, where putting the will over the eyes of voters even back then.

-- will have over the eyes of voters even back then. at least with obama, as of we have heard, he is somewhat more circumspect when speaking in person about his new ones and some of the things you hear coming out of his ads. in one case, he corrected or contradicted his own advertising. to make my predictions, i sort of threw darts at the claims they make in their stump speeches, romney and obama. we recently did take that sunday standard speeches that they give. -- takeouts on the standard speeches that they give. one from each side. i predicted it is quite likely that we will hear mitt romney say that gasoline prices have doubled under obama, which is an example of one of those things that is, yes, literally true if

you look at where gasoline prices were when he took office. they have plummeted due to the world wide near-depression we suffered, but the fact is that they have never quite gotten as high under obama as they work for several weeks in the summer of 2008 under bush. i think we will also hear president obama say that we are -- we have created half a million manufacturing jobs. he will drop his voice and say, in the last 29 months, which is of course not his entire administration. he measures of the point where things have bottomed. we have regained fewer than half of the more than 1 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost on his watch. that is a better way of putting it. not false claims, but claims that the day false impression if

you do not look at them -- leave a false impression if you do not look at them. i think we hear a lot of that. i will ask if you hopefully provocative questions of our panelists to get the discussion going before we throw it open to questions from the audience. are their claims for any of you, that they have made in the past that we have found to be false or badly misleading the they are not going to repeat for some reason? >> i feel fairly certain that we will not hear romney conflate the number of people who are bound to vote for obama, the number of people who do not pay federal income tax, and the number of people who receive some sort of federal benefit, that that is all the same 47%. i doubt we will hear that again. >> anybody want to disagree? >> probably not. i do not know if that -- it was

for consumption by a very small public. those with big wallets. >> that gives you an important aspect of our fact checking. we focus on the big, national messages, but we know there is lots of micro-targeting going on that is using very precise media to hit very precise audiences. we are not seeing that. we try, we asked readers to submit ideas through facebook and e-mail and what ever. we get a tiny portion of that. i think the case in point, this mailing i got from the romney campaign, maybe that is not going to be a message we hear romney assert at the debate, but it is clearly won the campaign is continuing to make. talk to campaign people, they will tell you, hey, you do not know about the ads you did not

see that are running in tiny markets in ohio and florida and what ever. i think there are plenty of those. >> what i am wondering about -- we heard one example of the president being more careful about the facts when he was speaking in person than his campaign is when putting things out. i think probably we will not hear barack obama claim that mitt romney favors a ban on abortion even in cases of rape or, a totally false claim -- incest, a totally false claim any misrepresentation of romney's overall stance. he has been consistent ever since he switched to -- to be in generally against abortion. he has not always had this position, but since he has adopted his present position, it has been clear. he has favored the usual exceptions. the obama campaign has at least

two tv ads -- in two tv ads repeated this utterly false claim. i do not think we would hear that out of the mouth of the president. do you share my view that the candidates are more circumspect in person than they are -- and their campaigns are in advertising? or is it just the president, not mitt romney? what do you think? >> particularly in a high-stakes situation like a debate, we are talking about the debates, i think it will be more circumspect. i cannot off and think of a claim -- offhand think of a claim that they would or would not say, but it is a whole different matter when you are right next to that person and they are able to respond and say, actually -- you saw during the campaign debates that there were moments when they would turn to each other and say, you

got four pinocchios for that. that was pants on fire. you do not want to get into a situation where you are exposed in that way, particularly with the internet, people can quickly look these things up. i noted that when one of them said, you got four pinocchios about that claim, the next day i had tens of thousands of hits. people had gone to the web and looked up what newt gingrich was talking about. >> another question -- recently, one of mitt romney's operatives made the statement to reporters when they were pushing him on the claim about welfare. we will keep running that, we will not have our campaign did but -- dictated by fact checkers. probably a lot of news people were shocked by the cynicism they heard coming out of his mouth. jim, you have been around the longest -- did this surprise

you? >> i really cannot say that i was. they had kind of behave that way all along. they were certainly not hurt -- terribly worried enough to change the rhetoric when something is pointed out to them. >> you mean the romney campaign? >> yes. i do not see a lot of evidence of trimming statements back to make a more accurate when they are repeated -- >> i do not know about that. this is -- my take on this, in the context of that question and answer, they were saying that this is the most effective ad. they said, that got four pinocchios. the response was, we are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers. what he means by that, politicians in both parties will stretch the truth if they feel it will give them a political

advantage. if that is the most effective ad, it does not matter what a bunch of nitpicking journalists might say about it. that ad moves people and has an impact. i have seen both obama and romney suddenly tweak or change -- suddenly tweak or change or drop language called out by fact checkers. all to the, there was a check -- decision there that it does not mean that much to us if we fix this. we will get less grief if we treat it a bit or change it on the martin -- margins, but the key things that move voters, such as, he apologizes for america or obama with that ridiculous thing about savings from the wars, and in the same breath he criticizes george w. bush for running wars on a credit card. he will say those on this one sentence after another without any sense he is contradicting himself. there is pulling there that says

that is an effective line and moves voters. it does not matter what the actual facts are. that is when -- >> in that statement, he also said, fact checkers come to this with their own sense of thoughts and ideas and backgrounds. he is trying to redefine what a fact is. he is saying, there are no objective facts. it is to somebody else's opinion about what we are saying. it is kind of like redefining apology. they are redefining what effect is. >> i do not want to be unfair to romney. my own view is that the attitude on the part of the obama campaign and the romney campaign was pretty much the equivalent. the surprising thing was that somebody from either campaign said it out loud. shocked news editors who had not been paying all that much attention previously.

are the differences? to any of you see differences in the attitudes of the campaign apparatus is? >> i think what jim said about the no apology theme is the same thing applies for obama. campaigns are about themes and messages. the campaigns have decided that these are the five or six or however many things we are going to hit. we are going to have done repeatedly with as much evidence as they can muster. at some point, they have got to stretch the truth to make this point. both of them are doing it. we talk about abortion -- the interesting, here is how i could see the abortion one plane out. i think obama, i am sure, recognizes romney's current position on abortion, but i could see an exchange returns to romney and says, now, you did support the personhood amendment. could that not have the impact of outline all abortions, and

put romney on the defensive and score the points they want to score and remain in the facts on that. of course, that is how they have tried to connect the dots on abortion, by taking romney's position there. i think it is all about themes. they have their themes and will keep hitting them. in some cases they have got to connect the dots that really are not there to giv. >> d.c. places were either campaign has paid a price for misrepresenting -- do you see places were either campaign has paid a price for misrepresenting facts? >> it was pointed out, it was not for public consumption, but the completion of those groups -- conflation of those groups, there was a serious -- >> not for general consumption -- tv advertising, applause lines in the stump speeches, that sort of thing. >> i do not know. that is kind of depressing.

>> if you follow the reaction we get -- >> in votes, or in the polls. campaign money, something that matters. >> it is -- is not like to of a control group or anything that you can tell that. -- you have a control group or anything that you can tell that. i say, i do not write for politicians. i write for voters and try to make them better informed. politicians will react to voters. if voters decide it will extract a price when a politician has not been honest, then politician behavior will change. but because we write a bunch of state -- read a bunch of statements that were not correct and they would have paid the price, i do not know. i did one thing on romney -- for a long time in his stump speech he would say the united states was the only country on earth where we put our hands over our

hearts when we sing our national anthem, which was quickly disproved by just looking on youtube. people around the world going like this and singing their national anthem. he dropped at the very next day. he never said it again. >> he paid the price. >> maybe. >> i would say that is an example of actually changing behavior, which i think happens rarely and in small increments. >> i think the other thing we were talking about before the panel with brendan, the other thing we do not know, how many conversations are going on with campaign message people, with people making ads, with speechwriters, they are talking about wording. how often are they saying, if we say that, the fact checkers will get us? i suspect that is happening a lot. the only evidence i have of that is a column written by tommy schultze, who is married to sherrod brown, who says that

happens in the brown campaign. i suspect that is happening in many campaigns. there is so much fact checking going on, not just with our organizations, but with others. we have partners in 11 states. there are newspapers and website around the country doing fact checking. there are a lot of eyes out there. >> that suggest, if things are that closely vetted and mauled over before they are said, especially speeches at the conventions, when they come out and repeat things that they know are going to the fact that again, that suggests there is no price. they have concluded that the price is so small that they are willing to -- >> there may be a price, but it is balanced against the fact that it is a tested and the fact of life that moves voters.

you do a cost-benefit analysis, like anything in life, the benefits quickly away the costs of yet another column in "the washington post" or the associated press that says there is no money there your saving from ending the war. >> sometimes i am struck by the aggressiveness of the ads, compared to what comes out of canada is now. d.c. a difference in the attitudes of the -- candidates mouths. do you see a difference in the attitudes of the opera is grinding out these ads -- operatives grinding out these ads, when they then sit -- have a little video of the candidate saying the approval of this when they have not even seen it. are the candidates even in charge? -- i did haveac's a conversation with one guy who

runs a super pac. this was after he was screaming at me about something i had written. he just laughed and said, you know, i actually do not care about what you say, because these ads work. he said, these ads work. they move voters. so what? i do not care what you are right. give me as many pinocchios as you want. these things work. he was very up front about that. >> some observers have suggested that campaign staffs now see it almost as a badge of honor to be called out by one of us or all of us, showing that they are tough and getting the job done. has it gotten that bad, do you think, is there that much cynicism in the campaign

operation? >> judging from the complaints we get when we write these things, i would say they still care about us. to some extent. they may not think the price is affordable, but we certainly get push back when they think they have been treated unfairly. >> someone at one. talked about the -- at one. talk about post-modern truth or whatever. you can look at a set of facts and draw a different conclusion. there are times and we have looked at the same set of facts and do not come to the same conclusion. some of the push back to get from the campaign's, they say, you may think that is factually inaccurate, but we think that is factually accurate. who are you to sit in a judgment? >> the welfare at is a good

example. -- ad is a good example. there is a strong current on the republican side that says that this looks -- there is no trust here. this looks like an attempt to undermine the work requirement in the current law. we are sort of being asked to fact check the future here. because it has not happened yet. you cannot read people's intentions. you have to listen to what people say. what they put on paper. what they have outlined. make some judgments about it. we will not know until the waivers are implemented, exactly how they are to be used. >> well, we now have some time for questions from you in the audience. if you would like to know how we go about our business.

please identify yourself and give us your question. wait until the micron comes. >> high. i have been working with the league of women voters in a project to help support tv stations when they do this. one of the things we are beginning to hear back from some of the television stations around the country is they do not have the resources to fact check. they have turned around and said, can you help us? we have obviously noted the work you have, but many of these television stations and to some degree newspapers are saying they do not have the resources to do the fact checking they would like to do or we would like them to do. particularly in this new economy. how you respond to those tv stations or to those newspapers to say, yes, we would like to do this, but we do not have the resources? >> let me first say we have partnered with primarily

newspapers, but also with public radio in 11 states. we have found a very successful way to scale fact checking. we now have 11 state politifact sites where we have trained journalists at newspapers and new hampshire public radio how to do fact checking. they do it. it does not have to be a big organization. they do not have to put up multiple people. our smallest partner is the "nashua telegraph, a newspaper with about a circulation of 17,000. the great fact checking on the leaders of new hampshire -- and they do great fact checking on the leaders of new hampshire. we of 36 full-time fact checkers around the country. we've talked to tv stations. none have been willing to make a commitment to it yet, but i can

see that happening. tell them to call me. >> also, sort of a partial answer -- when campaigns put out new ads, the ap tries to look at them and do what we call an ad watch. it is a fact check version just for television ads. we try to do those in the first day or two after a new ad comes out. we cannot do all of them, but if an ad happens -- they are dealing with happens to be one of those, there may be some resources on the wire. if they are micro-targeted ads we are not even seeing -- we only treat the ones we see that look like they will get wide distribution around the country. generally the ones going into the battleground states. those are available. >> the only thing i would add -- i am not an empire builder like bill is here.

i think obviously those stations to have reporters that cover politics. there is nothing that says you need to have a dedicated fact checker operation. if you are covering politics, you should be able to set aside some time to say, ok, let me that what the candidate has been sent. -- saying. when i was covering the 1996 political election -- president of bucshon, a team of with an idea to fact check what dole and clinton were sen. i came up with time to lay it out -- it was on the eve of the debate. this is what is true and is not true. they have the resources. it does have to figure out how to take those people and deploy them effectively. >> i have two quick

observations. it does not take a huge staff, for one thing. you have the resources of all the fact checkers up here on -- before you, and others in the media doing these sorts of things. anybody who wants to do this sort of thing at the local level can draw on an awful lot of work that has already been done just by reading what is up on our side. when i started, when kathleen brought me over to the annenberg center from cnn, i was doing this by myself with the assistance of one researcher and later two in the 2004 election. we have expanded -- we now have 54-time journalists besides myself for this election. -- 5 full0time journalists besides myself for this election. it needs to be a smart, good reporter who has been around the

track to times and has been applied to and can recognize the sort of thing and deal with it. you do not want to give this to the latest new hire out of journalism school, but my second observation is, ask the station manager how much money they are getting from the political ads that are running on their stations and why they do not devote one/-- half of 1% of their profit to telling people that the stuff they are feeding the public is not necessarily true. what is there more obligation there? maybe they do not have a big staff, but it is not as if they are not making pools of money on these false ads. if they have the money resources, it is just a matter of how they choose to deploy than. >> other questions? >> from the national institute of civil discourse.

jim started with the example of how effective it has been, the 47% of people not paying income tax, that is falling out of speeches. you brought in micro-targeting. this particular fact, in terms of responses we get from the public, has clearly stuck. people are repeating it -- ordinary people, not media. my question is, given this campaign consultants -- every cycle, their goal is how to get more and more sophisticated about micro-targeting. in this campaign, with so few undecided voters, i wonder if you are collectively starting to think about how to take fact checking into the micro- targeting area, particularly at this late stage in the campaign? >> i think the challenge is to find out what those messages are. if the campaigns are using

social media in very targeted way, it is not been seen by us. it is a tv ad only airing in a small market in florida, there may be nobody there who thinks to say, hey, why do you not look into that? so i think that is an aspect where we can build, i think, some crown-sourcing network that highlights these things -- some crowd-sourcing network that highlights these things. we will get a little bit of feedback, but it has not yielded the great response that we would like, but i think that crowd-sourcing is it maybe. >> we had something called spin detectors, with a box on our home page, and we have been

asking for people to send us examples of this sort of thing, and that if they get targeted mailings, robo calls, what are they seeing in their inboxes that gets sent to them, but he is right. they do not send these things to reporters. it is not like they are putting it on a television station, where it can be monitored, and we can see every ad that they put on, but there is a huge potential for flying under the radar, and telling targeted groups of voters the things that are not true. i do not know that it is going on. i assume it is going on to some degree. how great of a degree, i do not know.

limited success. if anyone who is listening has seen something like this, let us know. one of the challenges, too, my experience in covering these sorts of things for a long time is that these tend to flood in it in the last few weeks, and anybody -- these tend to flood in in the last few weeks. the money gets spent on these big postcards. your inbox just fills up with these things in the last weeks of the election, and that makes it very difficult for us to parse through these things and do any sort of pushback before the election, but we would like to do it, and we would like to do more than we are doing. jim, do you have any thoughts on that? the micro-targeting, or targeting in general?

>> there are all sorts of things that you can plop into. i have gotten a few. not as many as i had lilked. -- liked. if you are out there, we are open for business. >> you can take part in this in that what we have seen in the targeted messages, they are basically repetitions of the same stuff we have already debunked, so i think we are saved by the limited imaginations of the people that are putting these messages out. in the back? >> i am michael, with "time" magazine. i am wondering if you could make any quantitative or qualitative

judgment on whether this campaign has been more -- whether this is something that should be -- whether voters should, as an enforcement mechanism, whether they should have an idea of whether this campaign is breaking the rules on the honesty and truth -- >> the answer is no. i do not know any objective way to measure that, so we would not even try. even if we could come up with a scholarly, academic way to say that one candidate is being more deceptive than another, i think we probably would not, just because it would look like we are endorsing the other candidate, and it would limit our ability to persuade people of what the facts are. do you have a different opinion? >> i would agree, and it is a

really tough thing. first of all, some of us have methods of trying to quantify the depths of the falsehoods, but it is a real continuum. there are a lot of misdemeanors as well as the felonies that go on, and how to devise some kind of a rating system for that -- the other thing is, you only fact check things that you seem -- see, and we try to fact check the things that are either the most widespread or the most egregious or the most interesting or the most clear- cut, so that leaves out some things. there is a lot of squishiness and intended to quantify it. >> i agree. -- there is a lot of squish

iness in intending to quantify it. >> i agree. i am not going to pick something that is stupid and silly, but i want to find a way to help people understand more about the budget or the health-care system. then that is something i will focus on, as opposed to something that is more of a slip of the tonga, something like that. -- more of a slip of the tongue or something like that. politicians in both political parties will stretch the truth if it is in their political interest. there is no difference between the two on that score. maybe you can try to lay out that, oh, this particular candidate was more egregious in

this campaign, but overall, if they think they can get away with it, they will stretch the truth, and it does not matter who they are or what political party they are with. it is just the way it is. >> i think the best thing to do is to focus on journalism, too fat to check them and do the best journalism we can -- to fact check them and do the best journalism we can. we actually go the farthest of any of the four of us. politifact has a rating. we tally those ratings because our readers ask for it, but that

is as far as we go. what is interesting, and i do not put a lot of stock in it, but it is fun to see what people do with our work. there is a guy in ohio that has a word in it that i cannot say on c-span, it begins "who is more full of -- " and i am not sure how revealing -- it begins "who is more full of," and i am not sure how revealing that is. >> the average pinocchio ratings, it gives an average. again, it is a little self

selective in terms of what we look at. between obamamania -- obama and mitt romney, and they are both indian -- obama and romney, they are both in the two range. michele bachmann -- i do not know what it necessarily tells you, but it is sort of a fun thing to look at. it does provide you links to every single fact check that i or my colleagues have done for the candidates. >> excuse me. >> good morning. david, george mason university. i think we have seen in the

campaign so far that both candidates are in the position of being challenged. flip-plopped positions. i have noticed so far that both governor romney and president obama, when challenged by a voter or a journalist, it is not to say, "well, the facts have changed at the facts are different. the facts i look at now are not the facts that existed when that was my belief." instead, there are levels of equivocation or bluff. i think one latino group challenged him on keeping the promise of immigration reform that he intended to make. right then and there, i was hoping the president would say, "well, the picture is different.

let's look get it imperatively." instead, it was something like, "i meant i would try." why do they just cannot say that the facts have changed when it challenged on flip-flops? >> the obama promises, and the extent to which he has kept them or is working on them or has reneged on them, maybe you have got the most updated to respond to that. >> yes, we have a feature called the obameter, and it will be much easier next time. my sense is, one, i do not

believe they get asked directly about these things, and it may not be that the facts have changed, more the calculation. if you look at health care, for example, there were promises he made about prescription drugs or medicare, allowing medicare to negotiate prices, things that he sacrificed as part of a deal to get the support of pharma, but i do not know if the white house has ever said that on the record. "hey, we made a calculation. we are going to sacrifice of those two," and some are broken because of gridlock in congress, others broken because the white house made a calculation, at "hey, we are going to go for something else -- a calculation, "hey, we are going to go for

something else instead." >> there was one statement where he was not correct at all. in fact, we gave him two pinocchios. it was a difficult thing for him to answer, which would of been among the minds of what you're talking about with the health- care bill. "immigration reform was just not high on my list of what i wanted to do." instead, he portrays himself as a superman who could bound to several buildings at a time but just could not do that one. >> next question. >> "the weekly standard." i want to pick on bill first.

i am curious, because they have done a few studies. these are pretty easy to quantify. there was a study last year that found that republicans were at a rate of 3-1 over democrats, and i think there was a george mason university study that found it republicans to democrats 2-1. regardless of how they come down in the rulings. that, to me, it suggests that fact chapters -- fact checkers have a partisan agenda that they bring to the table. it was not that he was going to go whole hog on something.

>> i am not sure i would agree that they have been singled out. did not show we had looked at about the same number of democrats as republicans? i do not find me " -- find the "hey, you, give my team" -- someone came up to me to say that there was bias against tim kaine, the democrats, and then about a week later, it was said about unfairly targeted root -- targeting republicans. i think what we do is disruptive to the status quo.

we are easier to analyze because of our unique structure, but i do not find the numerical count analysis to be particularly persuasive. if you have a substantive questions about something we have done, -- if you have substantive questions about something we have done, we are happy to look at it. this is journalism. we are not randomly selecting things. >> just to follow on that, the way i do this is that i do not really look at who is saying the statement when i about the way it, -- when i evaluate it, and i give a running tally. "here is how many democrats i have looked at.

here are the republicans i have looked at. here are the averages." but i do not really look at it when i go out and fact check, and the interesting thing is, just in terms of the reader response, i would say it breaks down roughly three ways. one-third of the people kind of like what i do and send me nice and notes. one-third of the people think i am just a screaming conservative and cannot imagine why i am working at "the washington post," and one-third say i am a crazy, liberal hack that is simply doing the bid of the democrats, and it goes through cycles. brooks and i were slaughtered by democrats when we were raising serious questions about the and it's onign's,

romani working -- the obama about the comments timeline of when romney worked for bain. i do not know if this is your experience, but democrats tended to be more angry and more upset about some of the things that i write, -- democrats tend to be more angry. i think they believe the myth of the liberal media. >> a couple of things. i think, in a lot of ways, what we were right -- we try to, at this dispassionately -- we try to come at this

dispassionately. people either criticize what you have written or are loving it. invariably, someone who reads a fact check that may be critical of their candidate says, "there you go again. you never fact check the other side," but we do. i also think when you have a scale too great things on, -- to rate things on, you invite some of the numerical analyses. we are not trying to create

something that is analyzing all in that way, -- that is able to be analyzed in that way. we are in a year that has been dominated by a primary season where only one party had a primary, and they had 21 or 22 debates. that is going to produce a certain number of fat checks. -- fact checks. there were debates in january. >> are you done, jim? observations are correct. when i first started factcheck.org, this was late 2003, we went live late in 2003,

in the middle of the democratic primary process, they were all about democrats, because george bush was widely -- wisely keeping his mouth shut while howard dean and others a savage each other and told horrible falsehoods about each other -- while howard dean and others ssa -- savaged each other. when we defend one a republican against a falsehood said by another republican -- i have not rejected the idea that we are singling out either party for undue attention. if not, rachel maddow -- what he

has said about liberals. what we do not -- what we do -- if i would fire a reporter for turning in copley -- copy -- we look at all of the statements we possibly can. we love to debunk a false -- debunk false claims. i think "the weekly standard" would agree. when we look at civil rights, it should be not about the quality of results. -- it might reflect that there

is a republican primary going on, or it might reflect the fact that they are feeling the same journalistic standards. -- they are failing the same journalistic standards. i think this varies over time. that is just a false logic. i do not know that it is 3 to 1, and i do not know the time you're talking about. some of that is republicans criticizing other republicans. it is certainly not three to one on our side. other questions? we have two here, if we can get the microphone over to the table in front of the cameras. i am keeping her hopping here.

>> i am michael, and given what we have just heard about people choosing to believe their side or their candidate or their team of people that believe they are objective journalists, and i count myself among them, and i do not believe that many voters believe that being a liar is a disqualifying traits. what are you guys seeing? what can happen on the ground because of fact checking? >> kathleen eluded to this earlier. there is some modification in behavior. i have not been aware of very much of that myself. i do not think what we do should

be measured by the fact we have on candidates. there is too much for them to say what they need to to get elected. the campaigns are not public policy seminars. they are going to do what politicians have been doing for centuries. where i think we can have some effect, and i think where the evidence is coming out today that there is some effect, we can help those voters that care, and a lot of them do not. they are just going to vote for their person, no matter what, and they do not want to hear it, whether the candidate is saying something wrong -- that is fine. and you will hear more about this later. i think what the data is showing is that those who click into some sort of fact checking web site have better knowledge

of what the issues are than those that do not. i think that is good for democracy. i think some of these results are pretty depressing about the general level of ignorance. they are exacerbating that rather than helping it in some cases, so we provide something of an antidote for that. that is my view. do you add to that? rebuttals? >> i write for voters, not politicians, and a large part of what i tried to do -- try to do, while i have these funny little pinocchios, my main goal is to inform people about major issues that confront this nation, and i provide lots of links to other research so

people can go off on their own and troll through the data. some people say, "how can you say that is three pinocchios? that is one." if they go out on their own and learn more about the issues that confront our country, then i think it is a huge success. you look at the data of what americans think, how much money is made up of foreign assistance, i thinking it is 50% is foreign assistance, there is -- i think it is 50% its foreign assistance, there is much more to be done. -- 50% is foreign assistance.

>> i want to hear about the use of websites and emails. our students are reading these, and the emails are fired off immediately after a convention speech or a speech somewhere, saying, "look what obama said. we want more money. let's not continue with this president's a." -- this presidency." the curious who are interested in politics and news junkies, there are millions who are getting used this way, and i wonder if you make any effort -- who are getting news this way, and i wonder if you are making any effort?

>> it is a matter of triage. we tend to look at the things we think are getting the widest exposure, which means a lot of it is things on television, either advertisements or speeches or major events, news conferences. the kinds of communications you are talking about that party is sent to their adherents -- that parties send to their adherents, they are cheerleading. so it is no surprise that they may play absolutes but the facts on those things, and they are going to people -- play absolutes with the facts. i suppose we could get into the business of fact checking those, but with limited resources, we

tend to want to look at things that are said in an atmosphere where at least there is some pretense of objectivity and where it is going to go into a broad and general audience. >> i look at viral facebook prose, that either one side or the other has done -- i look at viral facebook posts. there was something based on something that the policy people put out. it had a caucus meeting metric -- it had a that obama had decre debt, and it was all over for eva. -- over facebook. exploded of one democrats -- among democrats. we have also occasionally looked

at graphic elements either campaign has put on their web sites, assertions which are wanting in both cases. >> we have tried to do a lot of those, because in the same way it is a medium for transmitting false information the facebook posts became a way to spread a lot of information, much of its exaggerated or inaccurate, so we did a bunch of those. it is tough. this gets to the challenge, on any given day there probably are

50 or 60 or 100 things we could check, and we have four fact checkers, so we have got to be selective. lately we focus almost entirely on presidential races. we love to fact check elizabeth warren, some of the claims on the massachusetts race, and we have not have the staff the reagan >> we have a section devoted to viral e-mails. i agree, we get the e-mails they send out to their supporters. they seem to be the same messages over and over again.

sometimes they do go over the top, and just the other day we got one from the romney campaign. i do not know what they are thinking. they held a news conference saying they were going through another round of quantitative easing, printing money, so here goes a message to donors -- "barack obama is at it again, spending your tax dollars. two things about that. the fed is reducing the deficits. they are making huge profits return in record amounts to the trade. the fed is legally independent and run by a guy originally appointed by george w. bush. this was so completely over the top we decided we have got to do a piece of that, but pretty much these messages to true

believers have got to exceed what we have already been debunked before we pay attention to it. we are out of time. i appreciate your questions. >> see the first of the presidential debates next wednesday on c-span, c-span radio, and online at c-span.org. a debate between the u.s. house candidates. the republican congressman and then a debate between the san cruz.o maayor and later, a look of the statements coming from the obama and romney campaign spirited >> tomorrow morning, the head of

the aerospace industry association on automatic spending cuts scheduled for january and how they will affect defense contractors and then of political science professor at in virginia on campaign 2012. also anthony sanders on housing prices, which hit a seven-year high in to live. -- in july. live with your phone calls every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> getting medicare costs under control is the number one priority, and it is the most untouchable thing, but that is going to cause more trouble than any other problem we have got fiscally, getting medicare costs under control the number one thing.

>> i did not have to fight very hard for it. we are calling people morbidly obese. i called them mega fatties. >> this is another thing where everybody knows it to be true and somebody has to pay for if you're a good -- to pay for it. there should be penalties. responsible fore your personal behavior, and someone is going to pay for it.

>> we are not the only ones. and there have been other commissions, a task force also said with regard to medicare we need to do something about the obese and smokers, and they also have a proposal for restricting spending on and of life karecare. these are difficult, painful decisions. >> fixing the economy, sunday at 8:00. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> it was a day that changed my life forever. it changed america is life. we are going through a power point presentation that is going to outline a historical account as it happened. things happen very quickly.

i am going to do my best not to ramble on and go too fast, but i asked you to sit back, clear your mind, and you will get a real sense of what it was like to be at the top of the food chain as a nation of 300 million americans was attacked by 19 of type at terrorists. good >> -- 919 al qaeda terrorists in -- by 19 al qaeda terrorists. >> the republican incumbent faces a challenge from the professor of uc-davis. this is a rematch of the election from years ago that he won with 51% of the vote. the candidates participated in a one-hour debate and who in sacramento.

-- 01-hour debate in sacramento. by fellow, and welcome to what should be an interesting conversation about issues the matter to sacramento and the nation. i am the moderator of this debate. >> this is in the third district, redrawn into a more compact seventh district, but what has not changed are the two men who want to represent it. dan lundgren has represented this region since 2005. he represented congress in 1980's and served eight years as

attorney general. the democrat has never held political office. he is a physician who served as chief medical officer and is a professor at uc-davis. these two squared off in 2010. there are five people on the ballots. this year there are only two. this is the most closely watched in the nation. >> we are joined by dan lundgren. thanks for being with us today. i want to introduce my colleagues from the other news organization sponsoring the debate. we are also joined by a small studio audience. i am asking you folks if you will keep your reaction to yourselves. you are welcome to offer a clause in the end, but

otherwise, it is all about the guys -- to offer applause at the end, but otherwise it is all about the candidates. each candidate will have a closing statement at the end of the debate. the candidates will have 90 seconds to answer questions. opponents will have 60 seconds for rebuttal. we will try to keep to the time, and i am sure that will work out well. most of my journalists have not seen these questions in advance. some of the questions are coming from the seventh congressional district, which were submitted to each news organizations. each candidate is going to have the chance to ask their opponents a question of his own choosing. the order was determined by a coin toss, and dan lundgren won the coin toss, so we will begin

with the opening statement. your opening statement. good >> i want to thank the moderator's for putting this on. thank you for joining us, and congressman, i want to thank you for joining this debate. i believe in america. i am a product of that american dream. and my parents came here with a little more of that dream. we have lived most of our adult life here, and that is where we have raised our daughter, and this is a great community, and what we have seen is things have been changing a little bit. we have been volunteering are around this community. three weeks ago we were working

in one of the free clinics, and we noticed every patient we have seen was someone who had been laid off. these were folks looking for work, and they were struggling to get the necessary care. did congress failed to create enough jobs to get this community working again. i believe in the american dream, and i am running for congress because we have to make sure every child has access to that dream the same way i did. >> congressman, your opening statements. on 9-11, i happen to be in washington, d.c. i passed over the bridge an hour and a half before it was hit. i lost a friend that day on that plane. i lost a law partner, and one of the gunman who had grown up with my children, and their family

went to church with us -- was lost in one of the twin towers. it got hit directly. that changed my life. that changed american directly, but i've found if i had the opportunity to go into public service -- icloud if i had the opportunity to go into public service i would, to do what is necessary to make sure those who attacked us do not succeed. we could use the tools necessary to protect us and at the same time, not allow them to defeat us for having us give up civil liberties. good i have been doing that every single day. i work on the issue of jobs, taxes, spending. the reason i went back to congress is to continue to work to protect the american people

against those who would destroy our way of life, and they are still there. good >> let's begin the questions. a reminder of the rules for each survey. the first question comes from marianne of public radio. >> comcast announced hundreds of job cuts in our area. you talk about jobs. he said congress failed to create enough jobs. when you solicited questions, the overriding issue was job creation. people want you to be very specific, so can you give us a concrete example of how you create jobs? >> there is no greater issue in our region. we are facing close to a 11% unemployment. we found out comcast is going to lose up to 300 jobs. they are threatening to lose jobs. we lost our fortune 500 company.

we have to start bringing business to this region, and we can do that. i talked to small business owners. they are ready to start hiring again. the problem they have is getting access to loans. we need a tax policy that will work not only in sacramento but in america. we need to close the loophole that allows companies to shift new jobs overseas. let's pass an infrastructure we have levees then need lots of work. of we have thousands of construction workers out of work. if we can tax that, we can start putting people back to work. i am a product of public schools. investment in education long- term is an investment in jobs. our children have to be able to compete in the 21st century, so this is not about building jobs.

this is about bringing those companies here and building on the assets. we can do it, but we have to work to do that. >> what about jobs and being specific about jobs? >> congress does not create jobs. congress can prohibit or promote in the private sector, a predominantly small business, so i have spent a good deal of time talking to people in small business. one thing they find is the rash of lawsuits. i have a law that would change that as opposed to litigation. secondly, if you speak to small business people, they are talking about the uncertainty created by taxes coming forward on january 1. i support and now that we have not allowed those taxes to go up.

now president obama said we ought to extend those tax cuts. we need to do it once again. regulatory reform, i have had a number of bills on which i have voted that have gone to the senate. we need senators to our. >> the second question comes from me, and it is for you. your party's candidate for governor mitt romney has been trying to explain a lot what he meant at a florida fund-raiser when he said there are 47% of americans who believe they are victims and believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, but they are entitled to health care, food, and housing. is that how you see them? >> sure, i think he made a major mistake in saying people want to be victims. he pointed out there are 49% of the people that do not pay income taxes. there are different categories. some do not because they are

retired. i would not call them and victimized. others have a low income and do not qualify for paying taxes on the federal level. what i have supported all along is tax reform that will require people working and making real money to pay taxes. our tax system is just right with all kinds of exceptions. i have supported legislation, voted for legislation on the floor. good the budget specifically talks about tax reform, which would expand the base, expand the tax base, eliminating any loopholes, and requiring businesses and individuals to pay their fair share. the problem is we need more taxpayers, not morning in taxes. that is how you are going to increase the government's ability to function we need to attack the spending that is out

of control on the federal level. >> does that mean and you would raise taxes? >> i need more people at higher income levels. we do not need these high tax rates if we would eliminate many exceptions and allow people not to pay taxes. >> americans do not look of themselves as victims, and 47% are not victims. they are people who have worked their whole lives, paid into medicare. they are folks looking for jobs right now. these are folks out what to get back to work. these are folks looking to care for themselves. i agree with a congressman. the way we address this is we broaden the tax base, but you give people jobs so they are part of the system. that is how we have always functioned as society. when i talk about the american

dream it is giving people those opportunities so they can climb one or two rungs on the ladder and leave their kids better off. we have got to on president -- to honor the parents and grandparents. we need to be involved in the social security system. >> on to this debate. republicans in this district and other districts are running tv ads hammering you and other democrats for supporting the president's health care overall, specifically what they say is a dangerous cuts to medicare by lowering payments to providers in the medicare advantage program. do you support that aspect of health care overall, and if so, what you say to seniors who are worried about their health care? >> the congressmen and his

supporters have been saying democrats want to cut over $700 billion from medicare to reagan -- from medicare. you know that is not true. you voted for the same thing yourself twice. the $700 billion never leaves medicare. it stays there. the sacramento bee has looked at this and said that is entirely false. congressman, you know the truth. you voted for this twice. we have to get serious about medicare. as a doctor, i have sat with people as they have to decide between one medication and the other when they needed both and could not afford both. let's get rid of fraud. let's negotiate on a fair playing field. let's make this about patients. let's practice prevention.

let's prevent a heart attack. let's diagnose cancer early so we can save a life. that is sorry to cut costs -- that is going to cut costs. let's make it about taking care of patients. those are cuts in payments to helping insurance companies, and you know better than that because you voted for the same thing twice. >> just because you say something is true does not make it true. look at the chief auditor for the medicare system. they ask whether there are cuts. they said yes. they admitted they are counted twice, once to help the survivability of the trust fund and then to pay for the additional programs under medicare. you cannot double count, even if you are a doctor. it takes it out of medicare. it specifically takes it out of

medicare, and we have one of the highest divisions of senior citizens who opted for medicare advantage in the entire country common and under the formula that he supports, the seniors in this district will suffer a larger cuts than those in florida, a perverse nonsense as a result of the fact of we have lower costs per patient than they have in florida. i am proud i voted for it, and will get the testimony to that state's you are absolutely wrong in what you just said. -- the testimony that stayed you are absolutely wrong in what you just said. >> we have some consistency, but this is an issue. the republican plan targets the same amount of money. that is one of the problems we have. we are talking about the same pot of money.

>> we are not. any cut stay in the system as proposed by the president, as admitted under oath in testimony to the congress. they take that money out and use it for new programs to establish -- established under the president's program, so it actually endangers medicare. it does not leave the money for that purpose. that is the statement under oath. we will make that available. >> are broke a format. the you want to speak briefly and now? >> let's look at what the congressman supports. he supports a budget that would privatize medicare, but would leave seniors without unnecessary care, breaking a promise we made over a generation. it would privatize it and add thousands of dollars in costs to

medicare. >> we can talk about this some more. >> this is a pretty important issue. it is not a voucher. it is a support program. it was first presented as a bipartisan proposal under the clinton administration. it is not a voucher. it is a premium support program, and it is a pattern under the health care program for millions of americans. >> it does not cover the cost of care seniors need. we have to put our patients first. >> something tells me we do not agree, which means we will get a chance to hear from voters. let me get to a couple of questions. this is for you, congressman lundgren, and it comes from rancho cordova global warming, is this an issue that concerns you? why? what steps would you take to

minimize the impact to the country? she means water supply, flooding common and raider management, and drought now. >> there is no question there is climate change. the question is is it caused by human activity. it seems we ought to take reasonable steps but not steps that would take us at a disadvantageous position economically where we will have less jobs. there are people who support the things that would destroy jobs, and we have an example of that in the current administration that i believe is supported by my opponents to try to basically ruined the coal industry in the united states, and losing tens of thousands of jobs instead of pursuing the cleanest technology in the area of:. -- of coal.

my record is pretty good. good we got rid of the program that gave us the equivalent of one car a year. it produces enough energy to light 250 homes a year. in reduces that which goes to landfills by 5,000 tons, and the number of carbo equivalent is almost 900. that is a pretty good record in just one year. good >> you are suggesting the global warming change we are seeing may not because by man- made sources of? >> my suggestion is we do not know to what extent is and what extent it will have on the united states. i believe it makes good common sense to try to reduce carbon emissions were possible. >> you want to talk about

climate change? >> talk to a farmer in the midwest right now, but climate is changing. talk to the folks in new orleans. we have seen these extremes. we can go about this in a smart way that creates jobs. we should never doubt american ingenuity when we put our mind to something. your there is no reason we cannot move forward and become an energy independent country. this is a national security issue as well. we need to start producing our own energy at home and putting folks to work. the question is how does it affect us at home. we defend the region we depend on our agricultural segment at home. our snowcaps are melting. that is our biggest reservoir, so we have got to address this, and we can debate what causes it, but the fact is the longer we wait, the worse it is

getting. >> another question. >> this one comes to us from citrus heights. she asks, how would you propose to work across the aisle to ameliorate the disastrous secret station -- sequestration in this country over the fiscal cliff? >> the first thing we need to do is roll up our sleeves and take these issues seriously. congress them. we have to learn how to satisfy political differences and we have to find common ground pin as democrats and republicans, we have a lot more in common than what separates us. we all want our kids to succeed. right now, the political parties are getting in their way. we have to get back to that

context where it is not about political party, but about taking care people and moving forward. here is how we do that cared leadership is not about -- hear is how we do that. leadership is not about blame. it is about rolling up your sleeves, locking yourself in a room and leading by example. congress has not been able to come up with a budget in over 2000 days. that is ridiculous. that is where this has to start. let's come up with a budget. there is a no budget to-no pay legislation that says, if congress does not do its job and pass irresponsible budget, they don't get paid. that is a step in the right direction paired i will co- sponsor that legislation which is bipartisan and hold congress responsible for doing their core job, which is passing a budget which they have not done in 2008. >> your being critical about the

current congress. give us an issue that you would be willing to compromise on. >> i have said that i think there are many things. no child left behind is not the right direction for education. we can find those issues where i am willing to stand against my party. so let's work together. >> can you work with democrats on the sequestration if you return to washington? >> i have worked with democrats my entire life. all you have to do is look at my record, whether it is immigration, criminal justice or things like gun laws. i have worked across the aisle. as a matter of fact, if you check with members on the other side of the aisle, they come to me to see if they can get some support. ron wyden came to me before he went to vice-presidential nominee paul ryan in terms of

his approach. unfortunately, i was totally involved on some issues dealing with anti-terrorism so i could not to deal with the specific one. but i probably have as many piece of red -- of legislation that is bipartisan and any member of congress. the idea of no budget/no pay, how about the idea of new budget/no job. i put my budget on print and have not seen any budget that you put on line. dianne feinstein has not voted for a budget in the last 2000 days. >> did you vote for the budgets during the democrat rain in the house? >> i voted for the alternatives. >> this one is for dan lundgren. >> let's go back to health care. the affordable care act, which to support the repeal? california and other states are already moving forward with a lot of the provisions, including the health benefit exchange, the

online insurance marketplace. how should the government handle states like california who are moving in this direction, getting people lined up for medicaid expansion with the expectation that the money will be there? >> we have to be very honest with people we cannot afford obamacare. it will bury us in debt. when you have extensions in the thousands, it might suggest to you that maybe this does not make sense. when you have testimony before the relevant committees in congress, providers will actually reach a cliff so you will have made the munition, a lessening of the number of doctors, the number of hospitals, the number of medical systems that can treat people. i have suggested that we not only repeal obamacare, but

replace it with other things. i co-sponsored hr 6283 with dr. burgess of texas. that would create incentives for states to create a high risk pool to make sure that no one is denied access to quality care. i have worked on a number of other different approaches, allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, that will increase tremendously the number of opportunities and varieties of coverage that is out there. if you look at what is contained in our budget with respect to actual reform of the system, you will see that people can stay in what they have now or have greater choices down the line with an element of competition that will help drive costs down. >> what i think the best thing for the audiences to tell us is what is wrong from the republican plan from your eyes.

>> i have been consistent. the affordable care at is not the direction i would have gone. as a physician, as someone who has dealt with in these issues my whole adult life and professional life, we have to do with the cost of care could but the only way you do that is by taking on the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry and making sure that it is about patients. their plan does not do that. it continues to allow health insurance companies to make those decisions. we need to take health care and put it in the hands of our patients. he touched on any number of issues. there is no way for us to get our economy going until we have addressed the cost of health care. when i talk to small businesses and large corporations, after peril, their biggest item is the cost of benefits -- after payroll, their biggest item is the cost of benefits. that has to be priority number one camp that is why i disagreed with the president's approach.

he should have made economic case for why we need to get a handle of health care costs. >> you have talked about wasteful spending in washington. you have issued statements about that night could be mentioned loopholes. those are difficult things to define for some people. give me one example of wasteful spending and a loophole. >> wasteful spending is the 30 cents on every health care dollar that goes to the health insurance industry that has nothing to do with patient care. that is wasteful spending. wasteful spending is the fact that the federal government is prohibited from negotiating on pharmaceutical pricing. the bush drug benefit forces to negotiate for the best price. that is and $80 billion giveaway. >> what is a loophole? >> a loophole allows companies

to ship jobs overseas. it is not fair trade. it is moving jobs overseas and leaving dollars over there as opposed to closing a loophole that allows us to accept those companies in america. >> congressman lundgren, which is a loophole to you, sir? >> i will say that waste is sold under -- is solyndra. we ought to use our common sense when we look at these programs instead of throwing money to the wind. a loophole, corn ethanol. it has been the largest boondoggle since i have been in congress. we finally got rid of the subsidy, but there is still a tariff on ethanol made from other substances coming into the united states. that is not only an improper

loophole, but it also happens to be immoral because it has as a direct impact on a particular food stuff that is utilized as a stable in diets around the world. i cannot see why -- there's no common sense to it. it does not make sense from the standpoint of taxpayers. and it is immoral to respect with the food needs of people around the world. >> congressman, iran says they're not developing a nuclear bomb in but reports as recently as last month show that they are stepping up their nuclear enrichment activities. just today, president obama told the u.n. that the iran situation is not a challenge and it can be contained. tell me, at what point is military involvement necessary? what is airline in the sand. -- what is our line in the sand.

>> the fact is, it is happening. our intelligence, israeli in myigence do not differenc judgment on the surface. the question is how do you analyze that and i think we analyze it in several ways. but the next question is where do you draw the line. i think israel is trying to tell us that we need to draw the line now and i accept drawing the line now present it is unacceptable for iran having a nuclear weapon. but you have to look at what the administration has done. this president points to the failings of israel before pointing to the countries around it that are threatening them. the last thing you should do is show weakness, a divide between your country and its strongest ally. that is what this country has done we are on the brink of a decision that needs to be made.

it is unacceptable. when we say it is unacceptable, we ought to have all options to stop iranian development of a nuclear weapon. some might say that will get us into a conflict. we will be in a conflict one way or the other. and if they have a nuclear weapon, the consequences will be devastating, not only for israel, but the entire middle east and the entire country. >> the congressman has said that the president has been weak on iran. >> the president has introduced diplomacy, but without the threat of military intervention is not real diplomacy. iran has to know that we will never let them acquire nuclear weapons. i'm understand the congressman. i agree with him. that would destabilize the region. that would put israel, one of our closest allies, in harm's way and we have to stand with israel. the greatest threat to destabilization in the middle east is a nuclear-arms iran.

we cannot let that happen appeared but we have to let air diplomacy work. it has to be diplomacy with a meaningful and understanding to ahmadinejad that we will invade if we have 2. >> we are now the point in this debate where each candidate will ask the other candidate a question. these are consistent with the rules we agreed to in the order we're going. >> congressman, recently, you sent out a taxpayer-funded miller saying that you will lead by example. which one of your taxpayer- funded pensions will you use to help us pay off the debt? >> i would have expected a question like that from you. i do not qualify for a pension

-- i will try very hard -- secondly, i would just say this. i have worked as hard as any member of congress and trying to control spending. i chair the committee that oversees expenditures of the congress -- of the house of representatives for two years. for two years, i have brought to the floor cuts to the congress, cuts to my budget, cuts to the leadership budget and that is not the easiest thing to do. and cuts to every single committee. i have cut my own committee more than i have cut the other committees. if the whole federal committee -- the whole federal government had cut its budget by 11%, we would be well on our way toward establishing a guide path toward a balanced budget. look at my actions. my actions speak louder than the

words. >> leadership is leading by example. your currently taking a full pension from the state of california of more than $50,000 a year at a time in your taking full salary in congress from over one of its any $5,000. we are going broke -- over $175,000. we are going broke in this state. we have to lead by example and putting ourselves out there. that is why we made the play-we have made. i will not take a pay raise until unemployment is addressed in this region. that is leading by example. i will not take a pension until we have actually secured medicare and social security next-generation. how can we advocate cuts to seniors when we are not willing to tighten our belts as well as leaders.

you proposed privatizing social security and giving it away to wall street. that is not the way we need to go. we need to make decisions ourselves and make these decisions. >> doctor, you have just articulated in number of things that the sacramento bee has said are false. evidently, you think it is appropriate to continue with falsehoods. four years ago, a mutual friend of ours was called by you to go to a luncheon so you could announce to him that you would run and you asked him to give me a message, that he respected my service to the public and that you would run a different campaign. you would not have any personal attacks. you would only talk about the issues. subsequent to that, i have received from your personal attacks, questioning my integrity, questioning my honesty, questioning the sincerity, questioning my motivation. my question for you is this. when you said that to him, were you telling the truth at that

time or was it a cynical political ploy? or, as some of your friends have told me, it is that you could not hold up under the pressure you received from the washington establishment to run a campaign against someone personally instead of the issues? >> this is about personal integrity. this is about stepping up and leading by example. this is about putting your community first. that is the promise i made as a doctor. and that is the promise i made as a congressman. when we talk about leading by example, it is leading by example. it is by making the sacrifice so your community is better off. it is about working a free clinic and volunteering. when you take a full state of california pension and when you raise your salary by 25% in the last month as attorney general sir you get an extra $11,000, that sets the wrong example. we have to address these.

our state is going bankrupt. when you double dip and take a full salary as a congressman and a pension from the state of california, that is exactly the wrong direction. we have to address these issues. those are not personal attacks. those are the facts. it is a fact that you have said you would privatize social security. we can fact check that i am glad you admitted that you voted for the $716 million that you are attacking me on. those are facts. >> i want to remind everyone that we will have closing statements in a few minutes in this debate for the candidates. we still have more questions. the socialllow-up on security issue. congressman, the trust fund will not have enough money to pay out full benefits in a decade under the current model.

changes have been suggested including increasing the retirement age and supporting the payroll tax. what would you do? >> let me just say that we saw an example of how well the doctor would work across the aisle with people. questioning their motivation, misstating the facts, continually misstating the facts that have been shown to be untrue by analysis by "the sacramento bee" does not bode well for someone who wants to work. i was around last time we had to face this. at that time, i worked with those in the congress. we had the grand compromise with ronald reagan and tip o'neill. it did increase incrementally the age of retirement. and the major factor in attempting to try to keep the social security system reliable,

that has actually worked for the last quarter of a century. but will we have the courage now to reach across the island talk about those things. it makes it very difficult to have your opponent and his supporters criticize you because you voted to raise the social security age back in 1983. i thought that is what they talked about, the great times of tip o'neill and ronald reagan working together across the aisle. i worked across the aisle. we stabilize the situation appeared and now he criticizes it. how does that it is anywhere closer to solving the problem? one of things -- one of the things that we have to do is make sure that people who are 55 and over are not affected. >> what about his accusation that you want to privatize social security? >> that is untrue. i suggested a portion of what you're particular account to be

invested you see fit. here is a reason why appeared everybody -- here is the reason why. everybody talked about how we needed a lock box. this is the only way you protect it. you give someone an actual amount of money that they can invest as they wish. >> i need to step in so we can keep moving. >> can you imagine what would have happened if folks had moved their money out of social security and into wall street in this recession? we would have had millions of seniors in poverty. social security is a sacred program. we have to address it in the broader context of the debt. we have to understand where the dead came from. it came from two wars that were not funded. it came from tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. it came from billionaires giveaways to wall street, to insurance companies. you voted for those. you voted for a budget twice

that will add over $3 trillion to our debt. that is ridiculous. trusting congressman lundgren to address these issues is like trusting in berlin to house sit for you when you go on vacation. >> i want to talk about immigration for a moment. as you know, president barack obama acted by executive order back in june to allow 1.7 million undocumented immigrants who came to the u.s. as children to stay if they meet certain conditions. did the president to the right thing? >> i would have supported the dream act. these are kids who came here and gives them a chance to become citizens and serve the country they love and to go to college. this is an issue of security. we first have to secure our borders. next, we have to actually take the laws we have and enforce those laws.

thirdly, we have to address immigration. we want the best and brightest to come to this country occurred we wanted to get their education. and we want them to build their companies here. that is what moves our economy forward. >> should we keep all those people here in the united states or send some of them back? >> we should have those who have successfully graduated from college apply for an extension of their leases and over time get a chance to become citizens so they can build their companies here. that is our history. that is our legacy as americans. >> did the president made the right decision? >> -- if he did not, what wouldu have liked to see different? >> you have to be committed to it. we spent 30 days in the congress that were unsuccessful.

i came back the next time and we succeeded in doing it. if this president had wanted to have major immigration reform, he should have done it. there were those of us who were willing to work on it and he did not extend his hand. you have the dream at sitting out there, this thing that he did. six months before the election, i mean, come on, that is pretty cynical. i support things like last week where we voted to get rid of the diversity of exception, a 55,000 visa program that was originally established by tip o'neill to help the irish get into it has nothing to do with skills that people have. it is a violation of the world wide quota system. congressman.e fair, grossma would you send people back next

>> those who set foot across the border yesterday, what right do they have to be in the united states? we need a program that -- you do not have to put them on a road to citizenship. if you cut in line, there's something wrong, and i have a program i have proposed that has those who have roots in the community that would get a blue card. there would be able to stay in the united states but they would not be on the path to citizenship. there would have to go home and sign-off there, get behind the line like everybody else. >> you issued a statement denouncing comments about "legitimate rape." but you did co-sponsor a bill that said only "forcible rape pregnancies should be eligible for federal the funded abortions." do you think there are different

kinds of rape? does that influence how you vote on whether federal funds can be used for abortion? >> the fact is, the word "forcible" was taken out of it. i went to the major co- sponsors and told them that i would not support that unless they took the word "forcible" out because the language they had without it was the language that it prevailed for 30 years in the congress known as the hyde amendment. it has support in both democratic and republican administrations and has bipartisan support in the house and the senate. it was the law. i told them, you should not change the language with one word because it would change the state of law. if you're talking about the mistake they made, i was the one who pointed it out. i can tell you it was after went to them that i told them i could

not supported that they changed it. rather than changing the law, i worked to make sure we maintain the law that has stood the test of time. >> rate is rape. we don't need to debate what it is. what we do need to do is make sure we protect individual liberties, that we protect a woman's right to choose. as a doctor, the oath i took this to sit with patients and empower them within their faith and with their family circumstances and make their decisions as best as they can carry as a doctor, i do not want the government coming into the exam room and making those decisions for me. i want to empower my patients to make the decisions that make sense within their faith and their families. we don't want the federal

government in the examining room. >> despite some positive news, the struggling housing market continues to be a drag on the sacramento economy. what role should the federal government play in trying to change that? do you support homebuyer tax credits and other incentives or what? >> another area i would criticize the president is not addressing the housing crisis early enough because it is a drag on our economy and we will not start to recover. as i am now they're talking to voters and talking to folks who live in this district, many of them are trying to do the right thing. they are paying their mortgage. but their homes are now under water. they are not asking for forgiveness. they want to sit with the banks and now that interest rates have dropped they would like to refinance their homes. the banks are not doing it. i think it is appropriate for the federal government to work with banks to start getting them to help homeowners and allowing

them to start refinancing their homes. these are folks who do not want to get out of what they are doing grave they want to do the right thing but they need help right now. >> #1, for some people who have been forced upon or had shorts hills, -- short sales, i had a major piece of legislation to make sure that would not happen. i have been told by realtors in our area and first-time home buyers say that they have not had the opportunity to purchase homes because investment companies have come in and bought them out from under them. third, i would just say that there are any number of people in our constituents who have

been helped with the banks and to see whether they can be refinanced. so i do think there is a place for government to play in that. >> what could you do about investors coming in? any ideas? >> i don't know, except maybe exposing the fact that this is undercutting -- i have had realtors say they have a boat to qualify and they have had to make applications on as many as 19 homes and then have investors come in and take them from under them. i don't know if there's anything legally we can do about that. but it is in the best interest of the people in our area. >> for those first-time homebuyers, folks who want to get in homes, especially veterans, we should be able to work with those individuals to get them access to the loans so they can buy the homes that they need. >> congressman lundgren,

actually, both of you -- can you identify for us the most dangerous interests in washington? tell me in your view which group just has too much influence on the goings on at the capitol? >> i don't think you can talk about any particular group. what do you want to do, say that someone cannot petition their grievances to the government? the gallup poll comes out and shows the president behind in it immediately they are attacked by the executive branch? i don't put people in those categories could i think it is unfair to bring the federal government down on somebody who is trying to present their case. it doesn't matter if they are the wealthiest or the poorest. what does matter is the transparency in terms of lobbying, making sure that everyone knows when it is done,

how what does that, under what circumstances it is done and then let the people decide. the first amendment is based on the proposition that the more that is said by more people, all stations of life, the better it is. you need to meet a misguided notion with a better notion. this idea that the fedele government needs to tell us that we think you should not be talking so much, or you are the favored operations and you're a disfavored operation -- i don't want the government involved in that sort of thing. so i won't even answer your question because it would suggest that i, as a member of congress, will punish someone. >> so there's nothing wrong in washington. >> that is not what i said at all. but you want me to point out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. the fact of the matter is that the rough and tumble in a garment allows people to say

what they have to say and then let the people decide -- in government allows people say what they have to say and then let the people the side. >> the citizens united ruling, the unleashing of millions of dollars that will corrupting our democracy, the unleashing of corp. -- i am glad to hear the congressman say he wants transparency. we should know who isating to campaigns and funneling dollars in two races. that will undermine our democracy. that truly is in my mind something that we have to address. we can do it. there is the disclose that that does suggest that we move forward so we at least know who is donating to these ads. i think that is a step in the right direction current congressman, that is in your committee. >> before closing statements, as

you may know, california has a plan for a high-speed rail system from san francisco to l.a. and maybe one day to sacramento. it requires congressional money. would you find that program? >> no, i would not fund the program right now. i would invest money in infrastructure. for our region, that would be levees, keeping your families said, but now is not the time for that investment to take place. >> when we had what was supposed to be a debate on state public radio two years ago, you were for it and you criticized me for not being for the very program that you are now against. so i guess you were for it before you were against it and maybe you will be for it again. >> thatould make a nice tv ad. >> you had your turn. >> very briefly.

we are coming closer. >> there were favored groups and disfavored groups. that is where the government does and does what i believe it is against the spirit and the letter of the first amendment. >> i know you want to say it, but you better sit quick. but the voters were for high- speed rail. this is not the time for it. >> now they have the opportunity to issue closing statements. by the order of the coin toss, doctor, you have the first closing statement. >> i want to thank the moderator's and those joining us on television. four years ago, we faced an unprecedented economic situation that took us into the great recession. now we face political dysfunction that threatens to take us back there. you have heard two different visions.

he is part of what got us into this mess. he put forth the same policies that got us into this mess kennedy-esque taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in wall street and big oil companies -- who do you think he will work for? he has voted on a budget twice that would add over $3 trillion in debt that will crush our kids. i am a doctor. the oath i took was to make my patients first. we have to make sure that every child has the american dream that i am a product of. here is my promise to you. i pledge not to take any salary until unemployment in sacramento is below 5%. i promise not to take a pension until we have secured social security and medicare for the next generation and our seniors. and i will co-sponsor the legislation no budget/no pay.

that is my pledge to you. by putting people first, we can restore the american dream. i would be honored to have your support and vote on november 6. thank you. >> now we go to the closing statement of the incumbent congressman lundgren. >> we face serious problems in this country. that is why i am in congress, to face those challenges. i have voted for budgets. i have put my name on the line with respect to what needs to be done to put this country back on a fiscal path. my opponent's party and those who support my opponent disagree. they want us to continue on a path of more spending and more taxation. if you listen to what my opponent says, he is for the status quo on steroids. i am opposing that. i am working against that could not just against it, i have a vision of the future for

america. it comes out of the promise of america, the idea that you can be the best that you possibly can be with god's talents, not encumbered by a government that tells you they know better. not a government answers all situation, where jobs are created by the federal government, where every answer is given to you, where every obligation is imposed on you. but rather in a country that is in the spirit of america, the spirit of the foundation of america, that understanding that a robust government does not interfere with the people. i have faith in the people. i have always had faith in the people. and i think i have an obligation and you have an obligation to give to our children and our grandchildren the same greatness in america that our parents gave us. >> i want to thank both candidates for this. we talked about a lot of issues. there are a lot of issues for

the voters as they go to the polls. i want to thank you. you can continue to follow information online at new10.net. the most important thing for you in the seventh congressional district is to get out and vote. election day is november 6. your vote does matter. thank you for watching. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> c. the first of the presidential debates next wednesday live on c-span, c-span radio and online at c-span.org.

watch and engage. tonight, a debate between san antonio mayor julien castro and senate candidate said crews -- candidates ted cruz. republican congressmen dan lundgren and dr. barron. >> coverage of live political debates continue with candidates for senate in nevada. dean heller faces shelley berkeley consent senator heller was appointed by the governor after the resignation of senator john hansen. this raises considered a tossup. another is the wisconsin senate race. tommy thompson and tammy

baldwin are competing for the seat of retiring senator herb kohl. >> to foster work and enterprise in the middle east and in other developing countries, i will initiate something i will call prosperity pacts, working with the private sector. the program will identify the barriers to investment and trade and entrepreneurship and in developing nations. developing nations will receive u.s. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law and property rights. >> we believe that freedom and self-determination are not unique to one culture. these are not simply the american values or western values. these are universal values.

and even as there will be huge challenges to come in transition to democracy, i am convinced in government for the people and by the people is more likely to bring about the stability, prosperity and individual opportunity that serves as a basis for peace in our world. >> next wednesday, mitt romney and president obama meet in their first presidential debate moderated by jim lehrer from the university of denver. watch and engage from c-span. the debate isn't 9:00 p.m. after the debate, your reactions, calls, and emails and tweets. >> two texas politicians, each touted as the future of their parties, debated the economy, immigration and other issues at the texas tribune festival in austin.

julian castro is the mayor san antonio and was the keynote speaker of this year's democratic national convention. ted crews is republican canada for the u.s. senate. this is one hour. >> i think you know the drill today. i hope you will enjoy as many of those as you can. if you have phones and you're not going to tweet or instagram, we ask you to turn off your phones. please give our sponsors a hand. [applause] we will visit for about 40 minutes. when we get started, there are phones on either i'll. -- either aisle.

we ask that of that the microphone at the appropriate -- we ask that you line up at the microphone at the program time than july 31, 2012 began with the announcement that julian caster would be the keynote speaker at the democratic national convention. following in the footsteps of several. before mayor castro had uttered the words menudo " gulf, speculation began. -- menudo cookoff, speculation began. [laughter] july 31 was a port from which the future of texas and possibly the nation was visible.

mayor castro and mr. crews are young and intelligent lawyers who can give a punch and take a punch and give a stunning view of the world with all of its opportunities and all of its challenges. [laughter] there also is vanity and a state that is in the epicenter of the demographic change recrimination. -- change gripping the nations. mayor captured just turned 38 -- mayor castro ijust turned 38.

pin he is a graduate of stanford university and harvard law school. he is a national co-chair of the obama-biden reelection campaign. mr. cruz is 41. he is a graduate of princeton university and harvard law previous work with chief justice william rehnquist, advised the bush-cheney campaign in 2000, work with the federal trade commission and the department of justice before serving as the nation's youngest solicitor general. but to have them both here today. -- we are fortunate to have them both today. [applause] the gentleman, thank you so much for being here. you both had quite a summer. so much for being here. you both had quite a summer. mayor castor, let me ask you to reflect on this summer.

-- mayor castro, let me ask you to reflect on this summer. >> first, a greenwich solutions for of and for a wonderful event. -- first, congratulation for evident for a wonderful event -- for evan for a wonderful event. it was like throwing a claustrophobic into a closet and then taking away the key. [laughter] i think what we have seen in historical cycle of some of what we saw in 2010 -- in this 2012 cycle is in some of what we saw in 2010.

people are still committed to the fundamental ideals that make the nine states special, that make it a land of opportunity, that make it a believe the greatest country in the world. in the same time gun they are nervous. -- at the same time, they are nervous. it has been an exciting summer appeared i also learned that my daughter knows have to flip her hair. [laughter] >> she does. most famous child in america. the nation also learn you have a twin brother. they said that the democrats love julien castro so much, they have an extra one. [laughter] mr. cruz, where did you learn about yourself and what did you

learn about the state of politics in this country? >> at the convention, i was just glad that i did not fall off stage. when i came out, the plan had been there would be a two-minute video. as happens at these conventions, they were running a bit late. they said okay, we will cancel the video. you had right on down and instead of just a clean stage, you had a podium and the teleprompter going down and there was literally aboua 15-fot tent going down behind me. >> were you surprised at the convention about anything you her saw? you have been pretty clear about your own views. but what did you hear? >> i thought the convention was fantastic. but the there was an energy on the ground. in terms of what i have learned

and experienced in the last year-and-a-half, it truly has been -- the biggest thing in terms of our primary is that it was really a testament to the grassroots. in any other cycle, what happened in the republican primary could not have happened. in any ordinary year, the should have been a very easy lay down. we were out-spent three-one. when we started, i was a 2%. >> the primaries back in march. you may not be sitting here. >> thank god for small miracles. >> you published an opinion piece in "the wall street *" this week where you say that america is that a crisis point. can you explain that to? >> i think we are at a fiscal and economic cliff. i think we have pursued government spending programs

that have created a debt that is out of control. at the convention come after talking, i went home to my hotel at 1:30 a.m. and i was looking on my iphone at twitter. and the comedian paula pound stone had sent a tweet that evening. i don't know her, but she said " ted cruz just said that, when his daughter was born, the debt was $5 trillion and now it is $16 trillion. what the heck did she do?" [laughter] >> you think the debt is putting the nation in crisis. >> along with government spending, is causing the dead. we have seen a growing expansion in the power of the federal government. it is crippling small businesses. >> you are the national co-chair of the obama-bided campaign.

>> i would put the challenge that we have as a nation in a different context. and say that, to the extent that we are a nation in "crisis," although i would not describe it as that because i believe that we can fundamentally overcome this and that we can do it in a fairly rational and reasonable way, i think the challenges that we have now had more than a generation of folks who are not willing to ask americans to sacrifice and to be realistic about how we take on our biggest challenges. for instance, everyone remembers the republican debate where they asked whether you would take the bargain of one dollar's worth of tax increases or $10 worth of

basically tax cuts and everybody raised their hands and said they would not accept that. we have become a country where -- it is not just one side, both sides, but more one side now than ever is not willing to be realistic about how we can tackle these challenges. if there is a crisis that i see in the united states for the long term, it is not the temporal issue of how we will deal with money. because i am very confident we will be able to deal with that. it is how will we bring that -- bring back our sense of what we can accomplish together as americans when we are realistic about those challenges. that is the thing i think about the word "crisis" in this

country. >> mayor castro is not the first to suggest that. for 10 years now, we heard that the government is not asking all of us to do enough. >> it is interesting. the word "sacrifice," when i hear a politician say that, it usually means grab your wallet. it usually means increasing taxes. and i will give president obama credit to in his the first presidential candidate since walter mondale to run explicitly on a platform that he will raise taxes. >> he is saying he will raise taxes on the wealthy. >> according to the supreme court, he already has raised taxes. that was the basis on which the supreme court of held obamacare, that it was a tax increase.

>> to mayor castro's point, people who have more are being asked to sacrifice. you do not agree with that. >> i do not agree with that. but me say two things. if you look historically, such spending has been 20% of gdp. federal spending has been 18% of gdp. i think the problem is we're spending too much. in the last three years, federal spending has gone from 20% of gdp to 25% of gdp. that is a fundamental structural shift and it is produced -- it has produced record-setting deficits and putting us in a path of greece and where much of europe are. the economy is teetering on the edge of recession. the were seen can do is jacked up taxes on small businesses and entrepreneurs or job creators.

that makes it all the more likely to push us into a recession. and for the 23 million people who struggling for work, the worst thing to do is hurt the small businesses that create those jobs. >> it is fair to say that the president has reduced taxes. he has reduced taxes for small businesses 18 times. he cut taxes for '95 -- for 95% of families out there. the question is do we ask everybody to sacrifice? when you look at the marginal rate in the united states, when ronald reagan took office, the marginal office with 71% to 72%. it is interesting to me that the greatness that people speak of in terms of the united states, when we talk about the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, 1970's, the marginal rate that folks paid was much greater. nobody says we will go back to that. at the same time, during the

clinton years, we had marginal rates that were a little bit higher than they are now and we had some of the best economic times that the country has ever seen. that is what i'm talking about. my concern for the country is that all of this heat has been generated around this issue instead of light and analysis and a sober look at the role that every american play, should play in strengthening our country. that is the concern i have in the long run. >> i want to pick up mr. cruz's suggestion that the economy is in trouble from -- is in trouble. texas has endured. but san antonio has had a tough couple of years. the census bureau report brought these numbers appeared between 2009 and 2011, unemployment in san antonio went up by more than

a full point. needed household income has gone down. you know how tough the economy is. you're leaving a city that has been bearing some of the brunt. can you talk about that? few dispute that the economy is in a world of hurt? whoever's responsibility that is. >> i think every american would say that the economy is not where we wanted to be. but if you look nationally, there is no question that we have had 30 months of private- sector job growth. 4.6 million new jobs that were created during that time. at the same time, if we were to go right now to the archives of the university and pull out the front page headlines from four years ago and look at what was happening at this 0.4 years ago, where we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs. in the month when president obama took office, we lost almost 800,000 jobs that month.

there was talk of another depression at that time. whether we are talking about taxes or san antonio or anyplace, are we were we want to be? no. but are we better off than where we were? when we're talking about going into another depression and the banks collapsing and so on and so on? absolutely. there is no question in my mind. >> this question has become a part of his campaign. mayor castro makes the case that there have been 30 consecutive months of job growth. and when the president came into office, things were significantly worse now. would you like to take issue with this? >> right now, tragically, work- force participation is at the lowest rate it has been in 30 years. you mentioned john stuart been normally, you can get a barometer of where the country

is by the late-night comics. >> i thought you said comics. [laughter] >> i will let even get into the midst of that. >> but letterman is getting older and we will have a vacant chair at some point. [laughter] >> so what did jay leno say. >> they went from 8.3% to 8.1% and the reason was that three and 60,000 people dropped out of the work force entirely, stop looking for work, which is the only reason the numbers went down. nearly 400,000 people give up hope they could find work. so obama has a strategy for re- election which is encouraging even more people to stop looking for what. >> but the question is not whether the and employment rate is 8.1% or 8.3%. the question is whether it is

better than when the president took office? >> absolutely not. when you have the worst employment participation in 30 years -- in the three and a half years of president obama tenure, gdp growth has been 1.5%. historically, for the last seven years, it has been 3.7%. we have had less than half the historical average pared by contrast, in 1984, gdp growth was 7.2% print what does that mean when the economy is growing, when small businesses are prospering? they are creating new jobs and people are able to find work. it creates opportunity for everyone. what we have unfortunately is small business after small business facing crushing uncertainty. the single biggest question you

hear from business leaders is they don't know between obamacare and dodd-frank and the offshore drilling moratorium in texas. but entrepreneurs expressed to me is the sense of great uncertainty. what will the federal regulators do? and the president keep promising to raise everyone's taxes, which is causing small businesses to keep capital on the sidelines and not deploy it because they have so much uncertainty. >> i am not certain that the president is going to raise their once taxes. but you know what the growth rate was -- do a deal with the gdp growth rate was at the end of bush? >> no. [laughter] >> the 4.6 million new private- sector jobs created with this president is more than were created under george bush. you have a president who

basically inherited one of the worst economies that this country has ever seen. of course, what will you do with a falling object? that object will fall and you have to pick up and the rise back up will be a little bit slower. what you have seen is that coming in the 30 months, 4.6 million new jobs, he has already created more jobs centers w. bush. this is a president who understands how to get the economy going and this election should be, between these two candidates, who actually has a plan about the future? given his record, i have more confidence that president obama can get that done than governor romney appeared >> -- then governor romney. >> right now, you're trying to get a sales tax increase to pay for pre-k.

can you defend, sitting next to someone who does not like texas famously, the decision to brought to market with a tax increase even for something you so strongly believe in? many mayors are with you, but there are a lot of elected officials and san antonio who are not with you. >> basically, i fundamentally believe that brainpower is the currency of success. in the 21st century global economy. those communities that created will be the communities that thrive in our market economy. and those communities that do not will be the ones who fall behind. san antonio, i believe, needs to make a huge investment in education. that investment is not limited to more money. it also means getting parents involved. it also means expecting more from everybody along whole

education ecosystem, from administrators to policy-makers to teachers come expecting more out of everyone. so what i have on the table in san antonio is basically a 1/8 cent sales tax that will cost the median household in the city $7.81 per year. mind you, every day in texas, it cost $359.81 to keep a juvenile incarceration. what we have on the table is the opportunity to educate more than 22,404-year-olds with -- 22,400 4-year-olds with high quality pre-k. >> i don't believe that taxes are inherently evil. >> that will be tweeted, by the

way. [laughter] give them a second. [laughter] >> i do believe that taxes are inherently evil. i'd like them and nobody likes the impaired but it will the voters in san antonio that there is no way to sugarcoat this. i am asking you for this tax increase. more than that, i believe in you. i believe that may put it in front of you, you can make a decision as to whether or not you want to make this investment. so are you willing to pay $7.81 if we meet you halfway by ensuring accountability, ensuring that we require parents to be involved in their child's education because they're probably the most important shepherds of what happens in a child's life. we require performance audits and we set this with a definitive time from the eight years. in eight years, you get to vote on this again. you can either keep it or leave

it based on how it has performed. and we set actual schools that make it transparent. what we will have to decide in texas, especially on the issue of education, because brainpower is so important to economic success in the future, is are we willing to make the investment? and if we do, i also believe that we have the right to expect more from everybody in the education ecosystem, from parents to policy makers to a administrators, everybody down . >> mr. cruz, sounds like he is telling the community, you can control it. if you want money for pre-k, you can vote to support or reject. do you have an issue with that? >> i agree with you. i commend mayor caster for taking leadership on an issue that he is passionate about pair and for taking it to the voters of san antonio. i think that is where the important issues of education should be decided come at the

state level and the local level. >> you would vote no, however. >> if i were a citizen of san antonio, i would look at the merits of the argument there is a world for taxes and things that government can provide. that is a choice for the citizens of san antonio to make. on the merits, is it the thing that makes sense for them to make. if it works, you can look at the results and other communities can make the decisions. one of the reasons i do like federal decisions that are forced from washington all across the country is that different communities have different needs. and what might be a good policy in san antonio may be a terrible policy in laredo or new york city. >> the mayor says that he does not believe taxes are inherently evil but with qualifications. you? word.il is a strong roa

>> it is. and that is what i am asking you. do you think taxes are inherently evil or do you? >> i think taxes are morally neutral. what is done with it can be good or bad. >> let me move on to health care. [laughter] i tried. this week, the census bureau that i alluded to earlier, they also talked about the state of health care in this country can it said that texas now has 5.8 million uninsured citizens, down as a percentage of our overall population. now 23% of our overall population is uninsured. we have the most in the country. along with that, i report by stephen murdoch can michael klein said that, if only we would embrace the federal health care reform, we could insure 3 million texans by 2014. in a state with the most citizens uninsured in the

country, why would we not try something that at least some people believe would ensure more than 3 million of our fellow citizens? >> right now, the nation is struggling with obamacare and what will happen if it is fully implemented. i think that is one of the central issues at stake in november. it is one of the central issues at stake in the presidential race and in the congressional and senate race progressed the fact is that you would vote to repeal. >> i am an answer to the -- i am an enthusiastic vote to repeal. if you look at what is happening with obamacare already, you see small businesses, employers drop health insurance -- talking about dropping health insurance if obama's is care is implemented. if it is fully implemented, i believe, it will lead toward shifting more and more the citizenry to government-provided insurance, to providing -- to moving us toward a single-payer

system. manyhe did not go all the way to a single-payer system immediately. i think that is zero -- i think that is what obamacare is headed toward defeat is fully implemented. every nation on earth that has implemented social health care, government-run health care, you have seen poor quality. you have seen rationing. you have seen waiting lines provide don't think that is what americans want. and i also think that obamacare was implemented with a government arrogance that was extraordinary. there has been no major social legislation passed in modern times, other than obamacare, that was on a pure party-line vote ran down the throat both of the opposition and of the american people. >> you will double down on the idea that the affordable care act, which has been found

constitutional, is socialized medicine. >> i think it is designed to lead as inexorably toward socialized medicine. >> i guess that you have a different point of view. >> i do. let's take a look at what the facts are. it has been fascinating to hear the discussion about obamacare over the last couple of years. every time you hear it, it is anecdote after anecdote, year after fear about what will happen, but what people are talking, snippets of conversation here and there. you started with a very good fact, which is that the percentage of folks who actually have health care, not just in texas, but in the united states of the last year has gone up for the first time in a very long time. the reason it has gone up is because now folks who are up to 26 years old can stay on their parents' plan. pre-existing conditions are not

some paperwork excuse for an insurance company to deny you benefits that you have earned and paid for. and so the only thing that we have out of obamacare are a positive so far been everything else, well, small-business owners, they are worried about it or is there a chilling effect that is happening because of it? there's no empirical evidence for that. it is all about some future that is out there that is painted very darkly. although, i will say that we do have a model to look at and it is massachusetts. it is romneycare. >> i wouldn't vote for that either. but but what we saw in massachusetts was that folks like it and it has worked well and it would be a great thing if the governor would embrace what he accomplished. i would agree with him that it was a good way for massachusetts to go. and in 2015, 2016, 2017, if mr.

cruz is elected this year, if he is up for reelection in 2018, i bet that folks will be singing a different tune about obamacare. >> to the specific point that the mayor made about pre- existing conditions and allowing young people to remain for a certain time on their parents' health insurance and even governor romney, whom you support for president has said that he would keep some of those things in any health care plan that he would put forward if he were elected president. are you ok with preexisting conditions? are you ok with keeping people on their parents' health care insurance to 26? are there things that you would permit or would repeal the whole thing? >> no. >> so you are against people being able to get insurance despite pre-existing conditions? >> let me be clear. candidates and politicians like to come with goodies print they

say we will give you something and it will be great. but they never focused on the cost. my view of how to approach health care reform -- this is a complicated issue that does not admit to a simple band a solution. it is fundamentally different from the approach of president obama. i think health care reform should expand markets, expand competition and empower consumers and patients and disempower government bureaucrats from second- guessing the decisions that are made between a patient and a doctor. what does that mean specifically? the three reforms a think would be most important would be, number one, allowing people to purchase health insurance across state lines. why is that? because that would create a true 50-state national market for low-cost catastrophic health care. part of the problem, every time politicians say that every health plan must include the following bills and whistles and they give away all the stuff, it has the inevitable effect of

driving the cost of health insurance for everybody. and one of the biggest reasons so many people in texas and nationally don't have health insurance is because it is so expensive. if we had a 250-state national market with low-cost catastrophic care, that would expand access. chris so buying across state lines would be number one. what are two and three? >> #2 is sitting in a tax- deferred way to take care of their health needs. i think that has significant impact, both in terms of manpower and consumers and in terms of constraining costs. >> so that is no. 2. >> #3, working to delink health insurance from employment p.m. it is a historical accident that most of us to get -- from employment. it is a historical accident that most of us get our health insurance from our employment.

we don't live in the 1940's and 1950's were people go to work for one company for 50 years. if you or i lose our jobs, we don't lose our life insurance, home insurance, car insurance. >> so portability is a concern. >> and insurance is personal and you own it and it travels with you regardless of your job. that goes a long way to solving the problem of pre-existing conditions. you're not losing your health care. >> i want the mayor to respond but i ask you two specific questions and i want you to answer them pierre do you support allowing people to buy insurance despite preexisting conditions? do you support the principle of allowing young people to stay on their parents' health insurance until age 26? >> the center those one at a time. let's start with age -- let's answer those one at a time. let's start with age 26. that will increase the cost of insurance coverage for everyone. >> which you do not want to see

happen been so i take that as a no. >> it is a no as a government mandate. but if you allow people to buy insurance across state lines, some policies will be available that to come if you want to buy this policy and cover your kids up to age 26, you can do so in pay higher premiums. i don't to jack up everyone's premiums because these things are not free. >> men they know or the possibility of that happening are definitely -- happening organically, definitely. >> yes. >> what about preexisting conditions? >> insurance companies should not dump you when you get sick. but if you have demanded that you must be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions, that is not insurance. >> if i go to get insurance and the company wants to deny me, your point of view is they should be able to peer >> yes. and ed will give you a reason why. let's imagine -- yes. and let me give you a reason why

appeared let's imagine you have home insurance. wait until you're home burns down and then go by fire insurance. you cannot have a requirement that everyone must be covered regardless of preexisting conditions unless you have an individual mandate that forces everyone against their will to purchase insurance. i disagree with the individual mandate and most texans disagree with a individual mandate and those are intertwined. you cannot have the goodies without the cost. >> i have a different view of it. i have a different perspective on it. in fact, the underlying perspective seems to be that everybody will go their own way. when everybody goes their own way, things will work out. especially with something like health care, we need to be more intentional than that. but just to take an example, one of the things that you mentioned is this idea of folks getting low-cost catastrophic insurance,

right? so that everybody gets that, a catastrophic coverage -- you have a huge help the event in your life that will be very expensive and you are able to get interest so it will be quite as and -- quite as expensive. but if you look at the reality, for instance, in the hispanic community, in our community, how folks have diabetes or hypertension, every year it is getting worse. we have so many folks who live truly are using the emergency room as their primary care physician. they have the catastrophe. they end up in the emergency room because they go into diabetic shock or they have to get an amputation. my grandmother eventually did. i don't want forced to wait as a state or nation to work with folks until they have that

catastrophe. health-wise. when an insurance company says they have a pre-existing condition, i want them to be able to get health care. more than that, we can make it economically workable, as the president has, so they can get that health care. just on that point, we don't want to wait until someone has a health catastrophe to say, now, instead of $25,000, it will be $5,000. no. we want to help ensure so folks can get good health care coverage throughout their lives so they don't end up in the emergency room and that health catastrophe, so they can actually be preventative, not just experienced the catastrophe. that is what we ought to aim for is a nation, not the other. >> i have five minutes before i open it up to the audience for questions. you said you don't question

whether that is legitimate. but we have two gentlemen up here who are both hispanics. i want to ask you both as individuals and members of the hispanic iscommunity in texas. what do you think about immigration that has been kicked down the road. we are finally beginning to talk about it in earnest. can you talk about where you think this country ought to go on this subject? >> immigration is an issue that i think, sadly, neither party is serious about. uc both political parties demagogue the issue of immigration, using it to scare people. i think the underlying policy is quite simple. most texans, most americans agree that, number one, we need to get serious about securing our borders. we need to stop talking about it and actually solve the national

security and law enforcement challenge of a border that is not secure. and number two, we need to remain in nation that not just welcomes, but celebrates legal immigrants. americans by choice is what ronald reagan described. our great strength as a nation is that all of us, our ancestors, came from all of real-world seeking freedom and opportunity and we need to remain a nation that celebrates immigrants and secure our border and gets serious about stopping the problem. >> yet that same president coming in 1986 and instituted a program that was effectively, if not literally, amnesty, which has been criticized by members of your party for opening the floodgates. >> i don't think amnesty is the right approach could i don't think that most texans or most americans support it.

i think amnesty is unfair to the millions of legal immigrants to wait years and sometimes the kids in line to come here legally. to reward those who broke the law is fundamentally wrong. >> we know the president put into effect prosecutorial discretion, and wait to address the question of children who are undocumented persons in this country. we do not have comprehensive immigration reform in this country. where should we go? >> my hope is that, after this election, the environment in d.c. will be more supportive of a comprehensive immigration reform. of course, we have different views on the subject. i agree with the president's decision to exercise prosecutorial discretion. i also agree what he did for the dreamers. i hope we are able to pass the

dream at. >> you are opposed? >> yes. >> but when you look at what is going on out there, the president is getting knocked on both sides. some are knocking him because they say that he deported more folks -- this administration, they say, has deported more focused than any other. >> well, the bush administration. >> we know that, since 2004, the number of border patrol agents have doubled in this country and that, president obama, he called for an increase to avert 21,000 border patrol agents. since 2007, revenue going toward border security has increased 55%. and we also see, for instance, in terms of mexicans coming to the united states, that is at net zero right now. to suggest that somehow our

borders are not secure, if what that means is are they as secure as we would want them to be? we could always make them more secure, right? we could theoretically have zero people ever coming across the border. but the borders are more secure than they ever have been before. >> i guess we could ask if the borders are more secure than they were four years ago. [laughter] issue then there's this of the tone of the debate. i think the fear mongering in the debate. for instance, this issue of folks who are otm, other than mexicans, and know that you and lieutenant governor dewhurst talked about this in the debate. it was mentioned that there were

many folks from middle eastern countries who are among the otm's who come to the united states. do you know how many middle eastern country otm's there were? >> i don't know. >> it is less than 0.002% of the boats that came across. it is so low that they could probably fit in this room. now, surely be -- we might suggest that one person is one too many, right? which i agree with. at the same time, this is why i said at the beginning of our conversation that there's a larger point here. if we are in some sort of crisis as a nation, the crisis is not any temporal or fiscal issue that we're facing or one policy issue. it is how we address these issues in a reasonable way on both sides. i do agree with you that, on

both sides, people have used this issue and others like a pinata politics. they beat it around, turn these issues into cartoons. but on this issue of what it means for our country to have immigrants coming to get immigrants who have been the building blocks of our nation, i really believe we need to take a sober look at it could hope we can get comprehensive immigration reform passed. i believe that the dreamers were morally blameless and ought to be allowed to stay here and pursue their dreams of going to college or serving the military were working or whatever. i don't think that coming in the long run, the united states will be well served by being a nation that sends the signal to the world that come even though we are saying we like legal immigrants, we are comfortable with where we are at.

the needs of our workforce don't support that. i think the future of our country is stronger if we go in another direction. so my hope is that we can get comprehensive immigration reform passed. >> is there a question? we will have you lining up. do that now while mr. cruz speaks. >> let me make a point on what the president did in terms of acting unilaterally. i think it should troublemaker castro and it should trouble democrats. a year ago, president obama said he had no constitutional authority to effectively grant amnesty to 800,000 people who are here illegally. and then, as we got closer to an election year, as we get closer to november, magically, he asserted that constitutional authority. >> shocked to discover the politics show up in an election-

year. >> indeed, shocked. i am concerned by unchecked power in the hands of the executive, with that executive is a democrat or republican. -- whether that executive is a democrat or republican. if president obama is right that he has the power to say, it does not matter what our federal immigration laws are, i will ignore those laws. and it is not simply prosecutorial discretion. when you register, you are effectively here illegally. do that, i president can would be curious what mayor castro would think of a republican president who would begin erasing losses from the books. >> i thought we went through that a couple of years back. [laughter] [applause]

>> let's actually talk about that. let's talk about a very specific instance. >> the biggest case in a year as solicitor general is a tragic crime in houston. two teenage girls were horribly murdered. the judicial arm of united nations issued an order to reopen the conviction of 51 murders. and the president, george w. bush, signed an order that attempted to order the state courts to obey the world courts. as solicitor general working for greg debora, on behalf of the state of texas, went before the supreme court and said that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally ignore the law. in fact, i use this exact same example. george w. bush is a republican, texas, i work for him and i admire him in many respects, but i fear unchecked executive authority. >> regardless of party. >> the supreme court struck it

down. i have not heard a single voice in the democratic party of raising the question of why is it the president has the authority to ignore the law. that is a dangerous precedent. if president obama supports the dream that or anything else, he can push legislation through and have it considered. in san antonio, with the tax increase for increasing pre- school, you said to put it to the democratic process. i think that is the weight change should be done, not through executive assertions of a 40. >> through prosecutorial discretion, he said we will prioritize certain cases. he did not say we are writing off the books all of these other immigration cases, right? again, what you're doing is projecting into the future a result, just like with health care that has not happened yet. that is not what he said.

process curatorial discretion exist -- prosecutorial discretion, as you know and you are a better attorney dan, exists in every single county courthouse all the way of to the upper levels of our government. is not breaking new ground pin he is not writing off these emigration cases. he is saying that we will prioritize those who have committed felonies, who are real criminals because that is how we believe that, with the resources that we have to spend, that we will keep our states safest. we want communities to be saved so we will start with the folks were criminals. >> he did a little more than that. he said we will not prosecute these people. it was not just that we will focus a lot of attention on others. the category people who violated a federal law -- >> and again, he did not write off those cases. he said the map for these two

years, while congress has the opportunity, we hope to do something about this and change the landscape of the law. we will have this two-year pause. this is a temporary status. >> i want to apologize in advance. i don't know that i will get to everybody, but we will try. these guys can debate all day long, but we will go on. please make them quick questions. >> my question is for both and gentlemen, but more for mr. cruz. as he advocates for spending cuts, there is a country in the world right now that instituted

immediate, consistent austerity and that is great britain. in the coalition government, they cut spending dramatically. thus far, they have failed to produce the economic recovery that it was promised to produce. in fact, i think recently, britain has dipped back into recession. so what makes him think that it will work here. >> austerity has not worked well in a lot of places. >> your solving the problems they're paired i don't disagree that government spending cuts on their own don't necessarily produce growth. the reason you see spending cuts is because our national debt now exceeds the gross domestic product and you're trying to pull it back from the brink, in terms of growth, my priorities in the usa would be to lead the effort to dramatically shrink the size of our and the standing of the federal government. to get growth going, the most

effective levers are regulatory reform and tax reform, both of which are removing impediments from the private sector, from small businesses to create jobs. if we can ease the regulatory burden, if we can use the tax burden, that is how you get gdp growth up. cutting spending is not primarily directed at growth. it is primarily directed at pulling in nation back from the brink. >> my name is danny. i want to ask both of you a question about young people in general. the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in the past two decades, as much as 440% occurred but student loan debt has skyrocketed as the well -- as well. last year's college graduates, just half of them were either unemployed or underemployed. what is your message for young people like myself looking into the future in terms of my job

prospects and how i will fare in this economy. >> mayor, give this young man hope. [laughter] >> i would say, first, stick with what will be the pay dirt in the 21st century global economy, which is getting an education, getting the knowledge and the technical skills that it takes to succeed. my fear is that, in the coming years, folks who have the ability to go to college or technical training or university may choose not to thinking i don't want to incur student debt. first of all, reforms made in the last couple of years have made better for students. secondly, you will never hurt yourself by educating yourself. you will always benefit yourself. so those would generally be my to pieces of advice. >> but, if i can interject, if there's no way i can get a job

out there, there is a half-and- half a chance, do i want to put myself through $40,000 in debt doing that? >> there is no question that the job market today is not the job market of america when it was full throttle. but remember that things are getting better. you want to have those skills so you can be competitive in the economic marketplace as this recovery continues. >> christopher from dallas. you mentioned immigration waiting list for legal immigration, but these are based on family preferences or highly skilled workers. most undocumented workers to not have these abilities. would you change the system and eliminate the cuban assistance act that allow you to come here with an unfair advantage that

others don't have. >> i did not immigrant from cuba. that is not where i came from. >> is it how your father came? >> that is how my father came. there is a rule through this country where we recognize the principle of asylum. we recognize the principle of political oppression. my father was imprisoned and tortured and beaten almost to death. my aunt nearly lost her life in jail. for decades if not centuries, we have recognized the political oppression is qualitatively different when you have a dictator and a murderer in power who is torturing and oppressing its people. that is different from people who are coming from economic challenges. we have long recognized that there is a qualitative difference between the two.

i would be thrilled to repeal the cuban adjustment act as soon as we don't have an oppressive dictator in cuba who is a pressing and torturing his people. >> my name is judy and i'm from boston. governing involves compromise pin can you share with us what your attitude towards compromise with democratic legislators would be if elected? also, if you have or you will be selling the grover norquist pledged which will limit your ability? >> this came up in the indiana senate race where mr. murdoch said explicitly that my version of.com -- my version of compromises when the democrats come over to my side. so where do you fall on this? >> is a very important question. my idea of compromise is the same exact as ronald reagan. president reagan said, what do

you to if they ask you half a loaf. you take it. and then you come back for more. i am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody, republicans, democrats, independents, libertarians. i have joop before that i will work with marcion's -- if they are willing to shrink the size and power of the federal government. i think we're facing a fiscal and economic cliff and we need to solve that problem. i have no interest in going to washington and giving a bunch of cathartic speeches. we're there to fix the problem. that is what texans are looking for, cereus leaders to ensure the opportunity and prosperity that everyone of us has been blessed to enjoy. but that it is therefore our kids and grandkids. on compromise, i am happy to work on an agreement. us say tax reform, i fully support simplifying the tax code, moving to a low uniform

but that is paid by everyone can i mean i did everything that i want. if we are moving in a positive direction and events in so many compromises going backwards. they have compromised in a way that makes the problem worse, that grows government, that increases the debt. i do not support compromise just for the sake of cutting the deal. >> the norquist pledge? yes or no? >> yes. >> 30 seconds? >> you campaign in poetry and governing process. the problem is -- govern in prose. it does not sound much like poetry in government these days. it sounds worse. people do not want to compromise. in san antonio, we have shrunk the federal government. the number of employees on our

city payroll has shrunk by 4% to 5%. we eliminated positions. everybody talks about ronald reagan -- ronald reagan did not shrink the size of government. government was much bigger when reagan left office than when he started. there is this idea that is created out there that does not match the reality. when you get down to local communities where we do compromise, where we make the tough policy decisions, then yes, sometimes you can not do it. >> we are out of time. we're committed to sticking >> c-span2's live coverage of political debate continues thursday at 11:00 p.m. eastern with candidates for senate -- candidates for senate in nevada.

the senator was appointed by the governor after the resignation of senator john hansen. this rate is raised -- this race is rated a toss up. tommy thompson and madison congresswoman tammy baldwin. a democrat. they are competing for the seat of retiring senator herb cole. their debate will be live on friday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. >> i was always shot -- shockee d that most people cannot explain why they did anything they were doing. how do you know that? why do you do that? at some point, they said there were some rules that were normally based our research. i went around campaigns with some degree of skepticism about a lot of the practices taking place. and the ways people were

spending money. as a learned about people starving in academia doing these field experiments and learned more about the innovations in data and targeting that revolutionized campaigns in the last decade, this was a major generational shift. in addition to these new forms of research, you have this cultural tensions between a lot of the old practices that have defined the way campaigns operate and the new movement. >> more with the victory lap author on the book to be saturday night at 10:00 a.m. -- 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> the university of pennsylvania's hosted a

conference on the presidential campaign and the role of journalists and claims made by the candidates. we will hear from professional media fact checkers and journalism professors who discussed how the media tries to dispel misinformation from the campaigns. >> i direct the at the university of pennsylvania. welcome to our three panel session. including sessions try to address the question, what is the role of journalism in the baulking deception and holding campaigns and donors responsible? we are releasing the results of a survey of adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2%. we are going to offer as conclusion that the public still has a lot to learn about the 2012 presidential race. we are going to save those who seek out fact checking on the internet do no more. the me offer you some specifics.

-- let me off you some specifics. the plans and records of major presidential candidates. we do know that when people watch debates the level of knowledge approves -- improves. we expect to find that in these areas, we have seen an increase of accurate reporting. we also see suggested evidence in the data to say that when journalism concentrates on an issue, we increase knowledge. we see evidence that there is an association between checking online with fact checkers and news sites -- it correlates with an increase in knowledge. let me turn to the findings. central elements of candidates' plans -- 65% know that barack obama proposes raising federal income taxes on households earning $250,000 or more a year.

he promised that in 2008 as well, so the promise has been around for a while. less than -- barely half know that the current romney-run plan would preserve traditional medicare for the 65 or older and retain traditional medicare for those younger than that. 51% know that mitt romney would keep the bush tax cut in place permanently. some knowledge -- a long way to go. next slide, please. to candidates' records -- that payroll taxes increased during barack obama's time in office -- decrease during barack obama's time in office. 25.4% know more jobs were created in the first term of barack obama then the last term of george bush.

that is a claim you see back- and-forth in advertising about who lost jobs and gained jobs. public confusion is to be expected. 31% knew that when mitt romney was governor of massachusetts, job growth in massachusetts improved. a claim in which democrats are trying to muddy the waters. in a long way to go in terms of improving public knowledge. we see deceptions that have been reinforced a lot in advertisements. 53.8% know that the statements are not accurate. barack obama has dropped all work requirements for individuals receiving welfare. 53.8% now that is not accurate. the rest either have the answer wrong or say they do not know. 41.6% know that this statement is not accurate -- mitt romney says that as president he will work to make abortion illegal in all circumstances.

deceptions in ads being believed need more public knowledge. next slide. on matters of background knowledge, in which the item was in the news for an extended period, they have higher levels of background base knowledge. these are not contested claims, so we would expect the knowledge level to be higher, but we are right around 70% who know the supreme court held that a fine in the affordable care act was constitutional since it was a tax. roughly the same, -- the percent that knew that the decision to downgrade the american economy from the highest credit rating, standard and poor blamed both democrats and republicans for the downgrade. when news media concentrates over extended periods of time over a matter of importance to the public, public knowledge rises.

we have a public capable of learning. we do see increases in learning as news attention increases at debates focus more intensely on contrasting positions. next slide, please. we see that seeking at fact checking, a fact checking or news site, in order to find out whether a statement by one of the presidential candidates was correct or not is associated with higher levels of knowledge. the controversy this year about whether fact checking matters -- this association would suggest it does. there's the question, did more knowledgeable people simply come to the site? we have the causal inference wrong. in order to tighten down that inference, we control for those factors that might increase knowledge, such as closely following the campaign, education, ideology, gender, and the like. it does not establish a causal inference, but increases the likelihood we have the direction of causality correct. we do need to go into a controlled experiment. we will report one of those in the second panel.

its conclusion will be the same. fact checking by the flack check model, visual debunking of visual claims, produced the same findings. as a result, we do think that the additional, argument for causal direction is that fact checking sites and the news area on the web, as long as this -- as well as stand-alone websites, can increase public knowledge. with that as a background, it is my pleasure to introduce brooks jackson. the first panel will discuss what it sees as possible and we hope not actual deceptions of the presidential debate. >> thank you. i know the assignment we were given is the title -- fact checkers forecast deceptions.

it was not forecast whether or not there will be deceptions. when we put this up to our colleagues and kick it around formally, nobody pushed against the premise. if any of you think there will be no deceptions during the debate, please feel free to say so. i will introduce my colleagues and analysts here. each of them is going to give their prediction about next week costa made. we will start off with bill adair, director and founder of the pulitzer-prizewinning site politifact.org. a journalist of many years' experience here in washington. bill, what are we going to see? >> we had a discussion last week about what we expected. i offered to be a little contrarian. glenn made the point he did not think mitt romney would use the line is that we have all been discussing so much -- that kathleen mentioned in the survey -- the claim that obama has gutted welfare reform.

i am sure you have seen that if ad that all three of us have debunked. i want to play a short video and -- as an example of this, and talk about why -- this is a video from the republican convention. >> i will be the first to publicly say i was wrong. my objective is for people to know the facts and the truth of all of this stuff. >> you know what you should do? you should go on some kind of truth tour. >> as a matter of fact, i already have. >> or what? that sounds crazy. what is it called? >> it is called the truth tour. [laughter] >> where is it going to go?

>> 30 states, 30 cities. >> this is from politifact. [applause] they checked a romney campaign claim that obama will end welfare work requirements, rating it "pants on fire." that, i believe -- i do not know what that means, but clearly that would be uncomfortable. in reality, the obama administration has said it will consider proposals from states aimed at finding better ways of getting welfare recipients into jobs. factcheck.org and the washington post fact checker have said the same, that the claim is false. [applause] what do you say?

>> allow me to respond. >> the truth tour begins tonight. [laughter] >> i should have set that up to point out that the beginning of that was hermann cain maintain the same point the romney campaign had, that the obama administration is getting rid of the work requirement. what i thought that showed was the importance of fact checkers in this campaign. i really think, and brandon and glenn and i were talking about how things are different this time compared to 2008. there is more fact checking than ever, and the fact checking has a much greater prominence this time.

candidates are being asked about it. i got a call from cnn last night -- they had asked mitt romney in an interview about how the fact checkers had looked at that and other ads. this year, more than ever, there is fact checking. this year, more than ever, fact checking is playing a role in the campaign. i think the survey indicates that people are better educated when they come to our site. in addition, the rest of the media is talking about our work in great ways. i think that when you look back on this election, we will say, this was the year of the fact checker. this was the year that fact checking really hit critical mass. let me get to predictions -- i think this will come up in the debate. not because mitt romney will bring it up, but because he will be asked about it by one of the moderators. but the romney campaign has shown no signs of pulling back on this. i got a mail -- i live in virginia -- i got a mail at my house for my daughter, who registered to vote a week ago. it repeated all the lines in the

welfare at. i think the romney campaign has found a message that it once to -- wants to keep hitting. i think that will come up in the debate. we will hear from obama. initially, we saw this in the polls, this has resonated, their traditional scare seniors about medicare tactics. that has been working really well. so i think obama will bring that up. one thing we will hear is the phrase that romney would end medicare's guarantee, which is a phrase the democrats have liked to use recently. we have raided that half-true for two reasons. one, it is not like it really has a guarantee now.

congress can change the medicare benefits any time it wants to. it frequently has. now, romney would change the structure in which people would pay for medicare. it would go from being -- it would turn into the essentially a voucher plan. in that sense, we found some truth and rated it as half- truth. >> thank you, bill. our next prediction from glenn kessler, checker of facts, awarder of pinocchios. what will we see? >> i have two. they both deal with medicare. one thing i always say, the more complicated a subject is, the more susceptible it is stretching the truth. when it is complicated, you can make assertions that a lot of times journalists do not have

the time or inclination to check. i do want to say one thing about welfare -- the reason i said i did not think romney would bring it up is because he did not mention it in his campaign speech. the issue is a very complex one with many sides to the story. though i did write the run the ad with four pinocchios. it really went over the top with the extreme interpretation. the obama administration's counter-spin leaves a lot to be desired. there is something very fishy going on with the issuance of the memo over the summer -- the people behind that now in the administration are skeptics of the welfare law. i have not gotten to the bottom of it, but i have given the obama campaign through -- three pinnochios for their counter- spin, particularly the way pr